If you’re like me — coming up a bit short on faith in your neighbors, and feeling not a little sickened of the seeming trend towards rampant self-righteousness, ignorant belligerence, and all-around bellicose
nastiness — then you owe it to yourself to take your eyes off the TV pundits for a few minutes and recalibrate your faith by tuning in to a gentleman who actually lived what he said he believed.

In other words, you owe it to yourself to check out 15 reasons Mr. Rogers was best neighbor ever.

If that warmed your heart, but didn’t quite part the clouds and let the sunshine in, check out this archival footage from 1969 in which Mr. Rogers goes to Washington, yep, and this mild-mannered wimp takes less just about six minutes to ignite an apathetic senate, crush Nixon’s funding cuts, and secure enthusiastic support to the tune of $20 million: Mister Rogers defending PBS to the US Senate.

And finally, how about sitting back and listening to the man ramble like one of your own favorite, eccentric uncles: Fred Rogers - Archive Interview.

People who live the values they propose seem rare these days. But knowing that Mr. Rogers did, and remembering when he was here, helps me believe there must still be many good neighbors out there. Hats off to you, Mr. Rogers, and a life lived well.

Ram Bomjon from Ratanapuri village, Bara district, Nepal, may be enlightened.

While some say he is the reincarnation of the Buddha, Ram himself has clearly stated he is not (Duhhh…like, dude, Siddhartha Gautama already reached nirvana, so, like, why would he be coming back here for another round?)

A couple of years ago, in 2006 and 2007, he gained a lot of media attention for spending months in meditation — supposedly without food or water. Unfortunately for Ram, the further he moved into the jungle to be alone and meditate, the more people followed to hang out with him, until thousands of visitors were making the trek to watch him sit all day in unmoving silence.

I vaguely remember the media bubble popping with rumors that he’d been proved a fake. Then I ran across this video investigation done by a crew from the Discovery Channel…

Let me see if I have this straight: a boy goes off to be alone and meditate. Strangers throw a party on whatever spot he retreats to in search of solitude. The world puts him on a pedestal, then denounces him as a charlatan.

I’m guessing Buddha Boy, who, after the media’s feeding frenzy disappeared into the jungle for a year and then reemerged briefly in 2008, is glad the world moved on. Actually, I’ll bet he doesn’t care whether the rest of us have moved on or not…the world is what it is.

Watch the documentary embedded below, or click this link: The Boy with Divine Powers.

Binaural beats are auditory brainstem responses that happen when opposite ears (perhaps yours!) hear sounds of slightly different frequency.

Just as your brain puts together two 2-dimensional signals from your eyes, then processes them to get a 3D stereo image, your brain also processes two separate auditory signals (one from each ear) and combines them into a super duper spatial auditory experience.

But a funny thing happens when your brain combines two steady but slightly different signals: it creates a pulsing beat equivalent to the difference of their frequencies. The best part, at least for curious surfers hunting yet another strange but safe way to alter their state of consciousness, is that brain waves gradually follow and eventually synchronize themselves with the frequency of the pulsing beat.

In short, if you want your brain waves operating at 5 Hz (a wave frequency typically associated with deep meditation) you put a 400 Hz signal in your left ear, and a 405 signal in your right ear, then sit back and let your brain assimilate and follow the binaural beat.

Brain Waves and States of Consciousness

Most states of consciousness have corresponding brain wave frequencies.

When your brain waves are in the beta range (15-40 Hz), you are in an alert, actively working state. For example, you’re on a TV game show answering a question that may net you $100,000 after taxes. Or, you’re breaking huddle on the 50 yard line, four points down with three seconds on the clock. Or, you’re giving a friend directions to your barbeque party over the phone. There are high and low levels of Beta, but in all of them, your brain is actively engaged.

When your brain is operating in the alpha range (9-14 Hz), you’re relaxed and reflective. Taking a quiet walk in the garden? Alpha. Just came home from work, opened a beer, hit the couch? Alpha.

The theta range (5-8 Hz) shows up during very deep relaxation and meditation. During theta, you’re on autopilot, and ideas seem to flow into your brain from nowhere. Even if you never assume a lotus position, you’re probably in a theta state more often than you’d think. How about the last time you arrived at work and didn’t remember the drive? That was theta. And remember when a great idea came to you while you were taking a shower or brushing your teeth? Yep…that was your brain on theta, too.

There’s also the delta range (1.5-4Hz) of brain waves which occur when you’re experiencing deep, dreamless sleep. This one, you probably don’t recall ;-)

Chasing Some Deep Relaxation

If your brain feels like it’s stuck in an anxious Beta state, and you’re having trouble shifting down into a more relaxing, meditative, alpha state of consciousness, put on your headphones or earbuds, and feed your brain some binaural beats: Infinite Bliss with Stereo Binaural Beats.

In the late 1950s, Nobel laureate Roger Sperry and Ronald Meyers discovered Split Brain Consciousness:

Initially they began experimenting with cats, and later proceeded to study monkeys. In 1961 the first human patient was subject to the split brain surgery.

The procedure worked well as a “cure” for patients who suffered from severe epilepsy and did not respond to anti-epileptic drugs. It was soon discovered that patients who had a commissurotomy had some interesting difficulties. Patients were not able to communicate information from one hemisphere to the other, almost as though they now had two separate brains.

Besides popularizing the word “commissurotomy,” Sperry and Meyers made evident that the human brain is actually a marriage of two separate brains — a left brain and a right brain — each capable of functioning alone, each with unique abilities. For example, the right brain excels at recognizing the human face and performing visual-motor tasks, but is a terrible reader. And the left brain has a knack for language and speech.

By the early 1960s, Roger Sperry was performing his most famous experiments into split brain consciousness with one of his students: Michael Gazzaniga.

In the following video, Alan Alda visits the research lab of Michael Gazzaniga, and discovers there’s nothing quite like seeing split brain consciousness in action:

Click the link to watch: Severed Corpus Callosum.

Or watch embedded below:

To date, Dick Cheney is the only person who has been able to watch Matt dance the world without smiling.

Watch embedded below, or click this link: Where the hell is Matt?.

Who the Hell is Matt?

Matt Harding was a video game developer, originally from Westport, Connecticut, who ended up working for a game company in Brisbane, Australia.

After the popularity of shoot-em-up video games led to him working on a game called Destroy All Humans (no, this is a different game than the real-time game currently being played by George Bush and Dick Cheney), Matt decided to spend his savings and six months out of his life doing something more upbeat and positive, and so he set off to see the world.

Fate and synchronicity and chance led from one thing to another, as they often do in this particular dream, and the rest is viral video history.

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