The Search: The Secret

The Secret is the 2006 best-selling self-help book written by Rhonda Byrne. The actual "secret" put forth by author Byrne is the (purported) centuries-old technique of the Law of Attraction, which in essence is the power of an individual's positive thinking to change and influence outcomes in their lives.

Many believers say that the Law of Attraction has roots in Quantum Physics, though no reputable scientist or publication ever supported the alleged scientific credentials of this theory. According to proponents of this law, thoughts have an energy that attracts like energy. In order to control this energy, people must practice four things:

1. Know what you want.
2. Ask the universe for it.
3. Feel and behave as if the object of your desire is on its way.
4. Be open to receiving it.

Therefore, thinking of what one does not have, manifests itself in not having. While if one abides by these principles, and avoids "negative" thoughts, the Universe will manifest a person's desires.

The book remains highly controversial for obvious reasons. It's harshest critics have stated that an individual's commitment to living by The Secret brings wealth, success and happiness to no one other than the book's author and publishers; it is a cure-all, roadside show, snake-oil digested as words instead of potion.

But there is no doubting that many, many people claim that their lives have been profoundly changed for the better since adopting the tenets of The Secret. A rather convincing testimonial in support of The Secret was recently posted by one such believer on Amazon.com:

"Please allow me to share with you how "The Secret" changed my life and in a very real and substantive way allowed me to overcome a severe crisis in my personal life. It is well known that the premise of "The Secret" is the science of attracting the things in life that you desire and need and in removing from your life those things that you don't want. Before finding this book, I knew nothing of these principles, the process of positive visualization, and had actually engaged in reckless behaviors to the point of endangering my own life and wellbeing.

At age 36, I found myself in a medium security prison serving 3-5 years for destruction of government property and public intoxication. This was stiff punishment for drunkenly defecating in a mailbox but as the judge pointed out, this was my third conviction for the exact same crime. I obviously had an alcohol problem and a deep and intense disrespect for the postal system, but even more importantly I was ignoring the very fabric of our metaphysical reality and inviting destructive influences into my life.

My fourth day in prison was the first day that I was allowed in general population and while in the recreation yard I was approached by a prisoner named Marcus who calmly informed me that as a new prisoner I had been purchased by him for three packs of Winston cigarettes and 8 ounces of Pruno (prison wine). Marcus elaborated further that I could expect to be raped by him on a daily basis and that I had pretty eyes.

Needless to say, I was deeply shocked that my life had sunk to this level. Although I've never been homophobic I was discovering that I was very rape phobic and dismayed by my overall personal street value of roughly $15. I returned to my cell and sat very quietly, searching myself for answers on how I could improve my life and distance myself from harmful outside influences. At that point, in what I consider to be a miraculous moment, my cell mate Jim Norton informed me that he knew about the Marcus situation and that he had something that could solve my problems. He handed me a copy of "The Secret". Normally I wouldn't have turned to a self help book to resolve such a severe and immediate threat but I literally didn't have any other available alternatives. I immediately opened the book and began to read.

The first few chapters deal with the essence of something called the "Law of Attraction" in which a primal universal force is available to us and can be harnessed for the betterment of our lives. The theoretical nature of the first few chapters wasn't exactly putting me at peace. In fact, I had never meditated and had great difficulty with closing out the chaotic noises of the prison and visualizing the positive changes that I so dearly needed. It was when I reached Chapter 6 "The Secret to Relationships" that I realized how this book could help me distance myself from Marcus and his negative intentions. Starting with chapter six there was a cavity carved into the book and in that cavity was a prison shiv. This particular shiv was a toothbrush with a handle that had been repeatedly melted and ground into a razor sharp point.

The next day in the exercise yard I carried "The Secret" with me and when Marcus approached me I opened the book and stabbed him in the neck. The next eight weeks in solitary confinement provided ample time to practice positive visualization and the 16 hours per day of absolute darkness made visualization about the only thing that I actually could do. I'm not sure that everybody's life will be changed in such a dramatic way by this book but I'm very thankful to have found it and will continue to recommend it heartily".

The Search: Vitamin C

Can was an experimental rock band formed in West Germany in 1968. It was one of the most important krautrock groups, comprised of bassist Holger Czukay, keyboardist Irmin Schmidt, guitarist Michael Karoli, and drummer Jaki Liebezeit, along with original member David Johnson.

In the autumn of 1968, the band enlisted the creative, but unstable and often confrontational American Malcolm Mooney, a New York based sculptor. After recording two albums, Mooney returned to America on the advice of a psychiatrist, having been told that getting away from the chaotic music of Can would be better for his mental health. He was replaced by the more understated Kenji "Damo" Suzuki, a young Japanese traveler found busking outside a Munich cafe by Czukay and Liebezeit.

Suzuki also left after recording two albums with the band, but it was to marry his German wife and become a Jehovah's Witness.

"Vitamin C" by Can

The Search: The Pirate Bay

The Somali Pirates have freed the Sirius Star, a Saudi supertanker carrying a $100 million worth of crude oil, for $3 million in ransom.

The rampant piracy off Somalia worsened dramatically in 2008 as an Islamist insurgency fueled chaos onshore. The Somirates are currently holding 17 ships, and 250 crews members hostage, in waters around Somalia.

The Somirates captured and boarded the Sirius Star in November of 2008. Their original ransom price was rumored to be between $15 - $25 million, but after months of negotiations, they agreed to settle. Not one of the 25 crew members aboard were harmed. The ship's captain, Marek Nishky, was allowed to speak to the BBC under the scrutiny of his captors, and said there was "not a reason for complaints".

UPDATE: 5 of the Somirates drowned with their share of the $3 million ransom when their small boat capsized.

Pirate Daud Nure says the boat with eight people on board overturned in a storm after all the Somirates left the Sirius Star following a two-month standoff in the Gulf of Aden that ended Friday. Five Somirates died and three people reached shore after swimming for several hours.

The Search: Marley & Me

From Kottke's Best Link's Of 2008: Big Dog developed by Boston Dynamics. A robotic dog that cannot be stopped. Seriously. Amazing stuff.

The Search: Boys Will Be Boys

From The DailyMail:

The Papua New Guinea jungle has given up one of its darkest secrets - the systematic slaughter of every male baby born in two villages to prevent future tribal clashes.

By virtually wiping out the 'male stock', tribal women hope they can avoid deadly bow-and-arrow wars between the villages in the future.

'Babies grow into men and men turn into warriors,' said Rona Luke, a village wife who is attending a special 'peace and reconciliation' meeting in the mountain village of Goroka.

The article goes on to say:

Mrs Luke said that the village women agreed that if they stopped producing males, allowing only female babies to survive, their tribe's stock of boys would go down and there would be no men in future to fight.

A resident of Agibu village, Mrs Luke said she did not know how many male babies were killed by being smothered, but it had happened to all males over a 10 year period - and she suggested it was still happening.

Choking back tears she added: 'It's a terrible, unbearable crime, but the women had to do it.

'The women have really being forced into it as it's the only means available to them as women to bring an end to tribal fights.'

The Search: Losing Track Of Time

Faceless LED watch designed by Hironao Tsuboi for 100%.

The Search: Montecristo Cigars

Old cigar rolling factories used to employ "lectors", which means "readers". These lectors did exactly that; they read stories to the employees while they worked. Since the workers had to sit and roll cigars for hours on end, giving them an entertaining story to follow day after day made the work much more enjoyable. Montecristo got its name because its employees favorite story was "The Count Of Monte Cristo".

Cigar companies no longer employ lectors, but many play books on tape for the workers.

The Search: Atlas Shrugged

The Atlasphere is a dating site for admirers of Ayn Rand. As we enter a period of unprecedented governmental bailouts and economic intervention, there seems to be a resurgence of interest in her work and philosophy of Objectivism. Here are a few excerpts of user profiles:

Zak, Long Island, New York:

I am rational, integrated, and efficacious. So far, I’ve never met a person who lives up to the standard I hold for myself (except online).

I take my relationships seriously. I am simply not attracted to many of the women in this world. I do not “hook-up” with girls. I only kiss those who deserve, and so far I have only encountered one who did. I would love to find someone I can learn something from; someone who challenges me to think; someone I can feel like I’ve won, rather than lowered myself to.

thustotyrants, Selden, New York:

[I am] short, stark, and mansome. (author's note: Mansom? Great word!!)

You should contact me if you are a skinny woman. If your words are a meaningful progression of concepts rather than a series of vocalizations induced by your spinal cord for the purpose of complementing my tone of voice. If you’ve seen the meatbot, the walking automaton, the pod-people, the dense, glazy-eyed substrate through which living organisms such as myself must escape to reach air and sunlight. If you’ve realized that if speech is to be regarded as a cognitive function, technically they aren’t speaking, and you don’t have to listen.

Read more over at nymag.com

The Search: Until Death Do Us Part

At birth, male anglerfish have no digestive system, and thus are unable to feed independently. They must find a female anglerfish, and quickly, or else they will die. When he finds his female, he bites into her flank, and releases an enzyme which digests the skin of his mouth and her body, fusing the pair down to the blood vessel level. In other words, his body merges into hers and he will spend the rest of his life inside her. All that will be left of his original self are his reproductive parts for breeding.

There are millions of miracles of love staring us in the face every day.

The Search: Carmina Burana by Carl Orff

For the past four decades, Carl Orff's Carmina Burana has been performed somewhere in the world every day of every year. The German composer's cantata is one of music's most resilient works, heard in concert halls and movie soundtracks, video games and hip-hop samples.

On January 17, 2009, a spectacular touring production of Carmina Burana rolls up at the O2 arena in London. This show is likely to eclipse all previous stagings. Besides a chorus and orchestra of 250, it has fireworks, giant puppets, cannon effects, and, according to its producer, Franz Abraham, “erotic scenes with naked girls imitating an orgy”.

Orff's ties to the Nazi's are no secret. He wrote new music to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, so that the famous score by the Jewish composer Felix Mendelssohn could be banished.

In an article for the Times Online (UK), Richard Morrison writes about a new, uglier secret of Orff's past, brought to light in the film "O Fortuna" by Tony Palmer:

Orff had a friend called Kurt Huber, an academic who had helped him with librettos. Huber was also a brave man. During the war he founded the Munich unit of Die Weisse Rose (The White Rose), the German resistance movement. In February 1943 he and other Resistance members were arrested by the Gestapo, tortured and publicly hanged.

Orff happened to call at Huber’s house the day after his arrest. Huber’s wife (whom Palmer tracked down for his film) begged Orff to use his influence to help her husband. But Orff’s only thought was for his own position. If his friendship with Huber came out, he told her, he would be “ruined”. Huber’s wife never saw Orff again.

Two years later, after Germany’s surrender, Orff himself was interrogated – by an American intelligence officer who had to establish whether Orff could be “denazi-fied”. That would allow Orff (among other things) to collect the massive royalties from Carmina Burana. The American asked Orff if he could think of a single thing he had done to stand up to Hitler, or to distance himself from the policies of the Third Reich? Orff had done nothing of that kind. So he made up a brazen lie. Knowing that anyone who might contradict him was likely to be dead, he told Jenkins that he had co-founded Die Weisse Rose with his friend, Kurt Huber. He was believed – or at least, not sufficiently disbelieved to have his de-nazification delayed.

And then, as Palmer’s film reveals, Orff did the most astonishing thing. He sat down and wrote a fictitious letter to his dead friend, in effect apologizing for his behavior. He craved Huber’s forgiveness – even, it seems, from beyond the grave.

O' Fortuna - Carmina Burana

The Search: Subway Map

A collection of great metro architecture over at oobject.com

Moscow

Paris

The Search: J.D Salinger

Happy birthday Mr. Salinger. Wherever you are.

The Search: Stimulus

As new cutbacks and layoffs are being announced each day by the major and minor movie studios, Hollywood is forced to make important financial decisions in order to ensure the stability of their industry; an industry whose product is entirely dependent on investment in creativity and an environment in which the best creative minds may flourish.

Now that the Oscar season is upon us, Paramount took out 7 pages of full-page ads in The New York Times today for Revolutionary Road and they commissioned a full frills "making of" The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button coffee table, selling for $45, which the studio bigwigs are sending out as Xmas gifts all around Hollywood. Disney inserted a book on Wall-E -- that's right, a book -- into the Los Angeles Times. A promotion worth $675,000 -- all to reach only a few thousand Academy voters since the pic was already out on video.

Said one Hollywood insider: "So a $675,000 insert is falling out of newspapers sent to 1 in 10 homes in foreclosure".

Source: Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood

The Search: Mercury Rising

David Mamet's play "Speed-The-Plow" has been running on Broadway with Entourage star Jeremy Piven in the leading role. Piven just announced he will be dropping out completely after missing a few performances. The actor said he hasn't been feeling well and attributed his condition to a high mercury count. When asked to comment, Mamet had this to say:

“I talked to Jeremy on the phone, and he told me that he discovered that he had a very high level of mercury. So my understanding is that he is leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer.”

(Photos: On the left, the star of HBO's Entourage; On the right, a transparent instrument for measuring temperature by insertion into the rectum)

The Search: Bedtime Stories

Patricia Piccinini is an artist. A creator. Get familiar with her work here.

The Search: Getting Things Done (GTD)

Daily Routines is a blog dedicated to examining how writers, artists and other interesting people organize their days. It gives insight into the difficult process of self-discipline required of all artists. A valuable resource for procrastination justification.

The Search: Moron, Idiot, Imbecile

The words moron, idiot, imbecile are not interchangeable. Moron indicates the highest level of intelligence followed by an idiot, and then an imbecile.

Words matter.

The Search: Snoop Dog

For anyone who doubted if change was coming...

The Search: Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway once claimed he could write a great story in six words or less. (Some say it was a bar bet put to him). He followed that braggadocio up by keeping his word with what he felt was his best prose ever. His story:


"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

The Search: Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil

The famous 3 wise monkeys actually have names: Mikazaru (Hear no evil), Mizaru (See no evil) and Mazaru (Speak no evil).