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27th July 2010

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Nanny’s Summertime Pasta Salad

1 box tri-colored rotini

1 bottle Italian dressing

2 carrots

1 can black olives

1 can parmesan cheese

2 cups cherry tomato

1 medium head of broccli

1 jar artichoke hearts

1 large red and yellow bell pepper

salt and pepper to taste

Boil pasta until al dente, drain and cool

Add half of the bottle of dressing to the past and stir

Drain olives and chop in half

Chop the rest of the veggies in small bite sized pieces, keep the artichoke hearts in the jar with juice

Add veggies and cheese to pasta and mix

Add the artichoke hearts with their juice and remaining dressing, mix

Add salt and pepper to taste

Store in the refrigerator overnight, its better the next day when all of the veggies have marinated. Enjoy!

16th July 2010

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My last dicussion on death and the afterlife for class

The near death experience website http://near-death.com, has fascinating stories you can read from people who have experienced a phenomenon called a near death experience of NDE. I love a good story, and especially one about the paranormal, but I am not entirely convinced that these experiences have anything to do with God, Heaven, or any other form of an afterlife.

You can practically learn everything you want to know about near death experiences on this website. You can even read stories about pets who have had the experiences, although I am not sure how you would know they had one unless you consulted a pet psychic. I am not going to say that this phenomenon is impossible but I am skeptical.

I know that you can be pronounced clinically dead and still have minutes of brain activity. I also know that I have very vivid dreams where I can actually feel in my body what is happening in my mind. Thus I have wet the bed in my dreams, woken up aroused, cried, and even talked in my sleep. I have done a lot of personal research on dreams and studied it last semester. I am certain that near death experiences have something to do with dreams or drug induced hallucinations.

In one story a man named Dave Oakford claims he overdosed on drugs and had a near death experience in 1979. Well of course he did! During the 1970’s when acid was extremely potent many people were having all sorts of out of this world experiences including thinking they were talking to God or even being god themselves. I myself have taken hallucinogenic drugs and imagined all kinds of crazy things that seemed real at the time. If I knew I had passed out and nearly died I might have believed that I had entered heaven or hell and talked to God. His story is not very valid considering that he had a lethal dose of brain  warping drugs in his system. You wouldn’t ask a guy who is tweeked out on acid to be a witness on the stand so why would you believe his claims that God or Heaven is real?

These types of personal accounts don’t prove anything.  It does create a lot of hope and excitement for people looking for proof in order to feel comfort. It also generates attention and money for the people who tell them as most of them have appeared on television shows and written books. The other interesting thing is that the majority of these tales are beautiful ones of people rising up into heaven. I couldn’t find one person who had a near death experience and saw the Devil or went to hell. Now that is highly suspicious considering some of the people who experienced it most people would call sinners.

When I read the stories I have the same feeling I have when I watch a show about aliens or Sasquatch. I love these shows and I find them fascinating. I even wrote reports about Sasquatch in middle school. To me these kinds of things are interesting but nothing I take seriously. There is no scientific evidence to back it up just as there is no scientific evidence to back up Gods existence.

The website boasts a large amount of “scientific evidence” to supportthe theory. One doctor, Dr. Bruce Greyson, says that he knew of a woman “who had an NDE in which she saw her deceased husband and her sister. She was puzzled since her sister wasn’t dead, or so she thought. In actuality, her family had hid her sister’s recent death from her for fear of upsetting her already fragile health.”

Now that sounds pretty interesting and convincing however, how can we prove that it wasn’t just a bad dream or hallucination? Maybe she subconsciously had suspicions of her sister being dead and it played out in her near death experience. Doctors also claim that blind people can see during a NDE and that people having heart attacks see what is being done to them in the operating room despite being unconscious.

Our minds and bodies are so complicated and no doctor fully understands every aspect. There is a large amount of dream research to back up a theory that a near death experience is just a dream occurring in deep sleep or REM. Your brain is as active as when you are awake in REM and you can even have the sensation that someone is with you. You can feel touch and technically wake up while still believing you are seeing what was in your dream. This is a type of hallucination that has influenced many people to believe they have been abducted by aliens or seen ghosts while in bed at night. Have you ever wondered why so many ghost and alien stories happen at night?

All I am saying is that all possible options need to be tested and researched in order to claim that this phenomenon is in fact a near death experience and not just a dream or some other unknown brain function.

Furthermore, in the article “Near-Death Experiences: Evidence of Afterlife, Says Radiation Oncologist” (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/717604) a doctor states his firm belief that the experience is real. Nowhere in the entire article does it scientifically explain how it happens. He says that many people explain having the same experiences of “peacefulness, the sense of leaving one’s body, the sense of moving through a dark tunnel toward a bright light, a review of one’s life, and meeting up with other “spiritual” beings.” I have seen movies and read books my entire life which describe the same instances. What if our culture explained the afterlife as floating away on a giant pink marshmallow and hanging out with turtles? Would we all experience that in the so called near death experience? My point being how much of these similar experiences are socially and culturally influenced by our cultures portrayal of the afterlife throughout history?

These kinds if social influences are burned into our subconscious. It is highly likely that the coincidence of NDE experiences being the same is merely a shared cultural vision on the afterlife based on what our society, families, and religions tell us it is like. Just as in the aliens and Sasquatch I will not fully believe anything about the afterlife until I am shaking the hand of the brown furry bigfoot or zooming away from earth in a brilliant flying saucer.

9th July 2010

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I hate when I get locked outta work! It’s always on the days that my coffee and bran muffin work really good :(

16th June 2010

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Oil spill update

60 thousand gallons of oil still spilling into the gulf- scientists on NPR said the cleaning the birds only prolongs thir death because they are ingesting the oil- WTF?!?!!!! It’s hard to think of the future when all I see is death and disaster and greed

15th June 2010

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my first assignment for class- psych- death and dying

I agree with many things said in this article. I, myself, am in denial of my own mortality. In the get to know you assignment I talked about my grandparents “passing away” to make it sound easier than “they are dead.” That is so similar to how Hallmark pretties up their condolence cards.

So much of how I think about death is influenced by I was raised in America. In our society death is certainly taboo. We are distanced from it. For example, army recruiters are now using video games to lure teens into signing up for the army. I don’t feel that a video game can provide a proper experience of war. Being shot by an enemy ten times and getting back up is not very realistic, nor are the enemies your fighting in the games.  A large number of casualties of war are innocent civilians and you never see women and children being shot in killed in these war games.

I grew up in this video game, television obsessed culture. My experience of death was what I saw on television. My grandparents did not die until I was in high school and my family never held a funeral for them. That is the extent of my experience with death.

Sometimes I sit and think that one day I too will die and I panic.  I think to myself, I better hurry up and do something with my life before I die! I wonder if that lack of realization about our own mortality as a society is the reason why so many of us have become lazy and ignorant. We don’t feel the need to do something with our lives right now or help that country in need right now because we have plenty of time for that later.

What is ironic is that my grandparents were Mexican. In Mexican culture death is not feared, rather celebrated and mocked. Mexicans celebrate Dia de Los Muertos, a tradition in which the dead are honored and people dress up like skeletons and throw parades and parties. I wish that tradition was passed on to my family. It may have helped us to “appreciate the importance of life” like the article suggests.