–Depression strikes writers, artists, and musicians up to ten times as often as the general population, a tendency often attributed to the creative spark. But according to one study (Paul Verhaegher, Syraccuse U.), it’s the artist’s propensity for rumination that often leads to the blues, not creativity itself.
Self-reflection seems to breed both depression and creative behavior…
–The Winter Solstice has arrived, an event traditionally marked by holidays, festivals, gatherings, rituals, or other events; many of these observances such as druidic rituals predated Christianity, and the early Christian church simply assimilated certain of these traditions, recognizing that people were unable or unwilling to give up their cultural heritage.
A number of these secular observances had a rather bawdy, carnival atmosphere, some involving role reversals between the powerless and the powerful. Feasting, drinking, dancing, and music-making were part of the attraction, which had therapeutic value in combating the cold, inactivity, fatigue, and malaise associated with winter.
— They’ve been called “rods” for want of a better term, but they are cylindrical flying UFO’s that have unintentionally appeared in some photographs since 1910. Some think that they are life forms from a 4th dimension; others that they are a new type of cephalopod related to squid that uses jet propulsion, perhaps born in the sea and living in the sky. Or they may just be photographic artifacts…
I want to believe in them as transdimensional beings, but they are probably tricks of film and light…
— This picture has not been altered. I’ve mentioned here before the guy whose skin turned blue as a result of taking a silver colloidal emulsion…he took the stuff for dermatitis, and while it didn’t heal the dermatitis, it did help the inflammation. Silver emulsions were taken for their anti-bacterial properties in over-the-counter and folk remedies until banned by the FDA in 1999.
The blue man lived in Oregon, but moved to California when his skin began coloring as Californians tend to be somewhat more, err, tolerant…he even has a girlfriend who barely notices his skin color anymore. The man is 57 years old, and took the colloidal silver for over 10 years. The condition, called argyria, is caused by the silver in the skin interacting with light as it does in the photographic process. The silver simply collects in the skin and other organs, and doesn’t disperse.
As if he hasn’t suffered enough, the guy has had to endure being called, Papa Smurf! — Anyone remember when they were popular?
–There’s a guy in California who as the result of consuming a silver-containing colloidal emulsion has developed skin that’s kind of a bluish-purple color.–I swear I am not making this up! He isn’t Andorian or a member of the Blue Man Group. He consumed the silver solution convinced that it helped all kinds of bodily ailments, and still takes smaller amounts of the stuff. Having bluish-colored skin has caused social problems, leaving him feeling a bit blue…he just wants to be accepted.
–Some believe that when you’re really scared, you can perceive more, as if your senses were running at high speed. Researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston found that your perceptions of time may change, but you really don’t. To scare people, they had them fall over backwards without ropes or restraints over a fair distance with only a net to stop them. They reached 70 mph by the end of their fall. The subjects (who volunteered to do this!) perceived that their falls lasted a third longer than they really did. Watch-like devices were strapped to their wrists to flash numbers, and the subjects failed to discern any more numbers during their falls than the non-scared controls.
So it looks like people can’t really enter altered states to dodge bullets in slow motion like Neo in The Matrix…
FOXSYLVANIA 
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