“Let the Palestinian people go”: What younger Jews will be asking of Israel at Passover Seder this year
Or at least give them the vote! No better time than this Passover to challenge Netanyahu's hard line on Palestine
MICHAEL LERNER
What makes this year’s Passover Seders unlike any others is that a majority of American Jews have been forced to face the fact that Palestinians today are asking Jews what Moses asked Pharaoh: “Let my people go.” The Israeli elections, and subsequent support for Prime Minister Netanyahu’s open racism and obstinate refusal to help create a Palestinian state, is not playing well with many younger Jews, and they will be challenging their elders to rethink their blind support for Israeli policies.
Increasingly, young Jews are on the Moses side, and see Netanyahu as the contemporary Pharaoh. So at the Seder more and more Jews will be asking Israel to “let the Palestinian people go.”
The easiest way for Israel to allow Palestinians their freedom is to create a politically and economically viable Palestinian state living in peace with Israel and based on the 1967 borders of Israel with slight border changes to allow Israel to incorporate the settlements in Gush Etzion and Jewish parts of Jerusalem that were built on conquered Arab land in 1967. The terms for that agreement were well worked out by “The Geneva Accord” developed by former Yitzhak Rabin aide (and Ehud Barak’s Minister of Justice) Yossi Beilin, and would include Jerusalem serving as the capital of both states, massive reparations to the Palestinian people to help fund such a state (paid in part by the international community), and joint police and military cooperation, supplemented by international help, to deal with the inevitable acts of terror from both Israeli and Palestinian terrorists who would want to block any such agreement.
Though Prime Minister Netanyahu has now sought to back away from his unequivocal election commitment in mid-March that he would never allow Palestinians to have a separate state, it is clear to most American Jews that he was telling the truth to his own community when he made that commitment. Only a fully unambiguous embrace of a detailed plan for ending the Occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza, and major unilateral acts on Israel’s part to begin to implement the creation of a Palestinian state, would be believed by any Palestinians at this point. And who can blame them?
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But Netanyahu, like Pharaoh, has a hardened heart. Like Pharaoh’s dealings with Moses, he is likely to make statements seeking to appease the people he holds in bondage on the West Bank and Gaza, but when it comes to actions, he will give little but token steps that are not close to the freedom the Palestinian people rightly ask for themselves. In a tragic reversal, we who had been oppressed now oppress, as though the psychological dynamic of the victim identifying with the oppressor is now playing out in a way that brings dishonor to the revolutionary vision of freedom that the Jewish people brought to the world and have celebrated for at least 2,000 years as central to Judaism. Not that we had no warning—our Torah explicitly repeats over and over versions of the following theme: “When you come into land, do not oppress the stranger/other, remember that you were the stranger/other in the Land of Egypt.”
Given this reality, many Jews, and a disproportionately larger number of young Jews, will be asking a provocative question at their Seder tables: “If Israel won’t let the Palestinian people have their own state, then don’t we have to insist that the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza be given the vote? After 45 years of Occupation and subordination to the Israeli government, Israel can no longer claim to be a democratic society while denying the vote to those Palestinians who live under Occupation. If West Bank Palestinians and Gazans are not allowed the same rights as Jews living next door to them in West Bank settlements, how can we pretend that Israel is not acting as an oppressor and forsaking any claim to be a democracy?”
The call for “One Person, One Vote” has a strong resonance with the American people and with most people on the planet. It may even resonate with many Israelis who have memories of what it was like to live in societies that did not give Jews equal rights. But for other Israelis, that demand might be the one thing that would open them up to the need for the immediate creation of a separate Palestinian state. Fearful that giving Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza the same rights already given to Palestinians living within the pre-’67 borders of Israel might give Palestinians real power to influence the outcome of elections, they might respond in the same panic that led Netanyahu to scare Israelis that they had better get out to vote because Israeli Palestinians were already going to the polls in large numbers. The Palestinian Authority might find that adopting the demand for “One Person, One Vote” might be the most powerful way to get the two states they’ve unsuccessfully sought up till now. In my view, two states are preferable to trying a forced marriage between two peoples that have so much mutual suspicion–they need a clean divorce, not a shotgun wedding! But since Israel won’t give that divorce any other way, the demand for a fair marriage is better than Palestinians remaining a de facto slave to Israeli fears and Israeli power.
Passover Seders are all about asking important questions—this year, many American Jews are likely to be asking how Jews can celebrate our own freedom without insisting that Israel “Let their people go” or at least give them the vote! Many younger Jews are good at sniffing out hypocrisy, and they may be causing a heated debate at any Seder that avoids this question.
Friday, March 27, 2015
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
ARTICLE: Robert Lanza, M.D. Become a fan Why the Earth Will Never Be Invaded (HOW SPECIAL WE ALL ARE)
Robert Lanza, M.D. Become a fan
Why the Earth Will Never Be Invaded
Why haven't the Borg invaded the Earth yet? I have watched every episode of Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise, and myriad movies where the Earth is invaded by aliens. I love science fiction. But it is only fiction and will remain so.
Many people, including renowned scientist Stephen Hawking, are also concerned about extraterrestrials invading the Earth. "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," said Hawking "I imagine they might exist in massive ships... looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach."
Last week, late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel asked President Obama about Area 51 and UFOs; and just last May, two top astronomers told Congress that it would be "bizarre if we are alone" and asked for continued funding to detect extraterrestrial life. If you extrapolate "there are a trillion planets in the galaxy," said Seth Shostak, an astronomer at the SETI Institute "That's a lot of places for life." Dan Werthimer, director of the SETI Research Center added "It would be a cramped mind that didn't wonder what other life is out there."
So where is ET? Since the 1960s, Soviet scientists, NASA and others have been searching the cosmos for signs of intelligent life. Scientists estimate the universe contains more than 100 billion galaxies (our own Milky Way alone is home to around 300 billion stars). According to the late Carl Sagan, there should be about a septillion -- 1 followed by 24 zeros -- planets capable of supporting life. Surely, in this lapse of suns, advanced life would have evolved somewhere if life and consciousness were just random accidents. Yet despite half-a-century of scanning the sky, astronomers have failed to find any evidence of life, which our radio telescopes should be able to easily detect.
Scientists note that extraterrestrials should have had enough time to have colonized the entire galaxy. Did they blow themselves up or is the problem more fundamental? In a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, Eric Metaxas wrote, "What happened? As our knowledge of the universe increased, it became clear that there were far more factors necessary for life than Sagan supposed. His two parameters grew to 10 and then 20 and then 50, and so the number of potentially life-supporting planets decreased accordingly. The number dropped to a few thousand planets and kept on plummeting... As factors continued to be discovered, the number of possible planets hit zero, and kept going. In other words, the odds turned against any planet in the universe supporting life, including this one. Probability said that even we shouldn't be here."
Yet, here we are on this warm little planet at just the right time in the history of the universe: The molten earth has cooled, but it's not too cold. And it's not too hot; the sun hasn't expanded enough to melt the Earth's surface with its searing gas yet. Even setting aside the issue of being here and now, the chance of random physical laws and events leading to this point borders on a statistical impossibility.
A scientific theory, biocentrism, provides the explanation -- and predicts we're alone. Although evolution does a terrific job of helping us understand the past, it fails to capture the driving force. It needs to add the observer to the equation. Indeed, "When we measure something we are forcing an undetermined, undefined world to assume an experimental value," said Nobel physicist Niels Bohr "We are not 'measuring' the world, we are creating it."
Cosmologists propose that the universe was until recently a lifeless collection of particles bouncing against each other. It's presented as a watch that somehow wound itself up, and that will unwind in a semi-predictable way. But they have ignored a critical component of the cosmos because they don't know what to do with it. This component, consciousness, is an utter mystery. How did inert, random bits of matter ever morph into Obama or Lady Gaga?
To understand what's going on requires an understanding of how the observer, our presence, plays a role. According to the current paradigm, the universe and the laws of nature just popped into existence out of nothingness. From the Big Bang until the present time, we've been incredibly lucky. This good fortune started from the moment of creation; if the Big Bang had been one-part-in-a-million more powerful, the universe would have rushed out too fast for galaxies to have developed. There are over 200 physical parameters like this that could have any value but happen to be exactly right for us to be here. Change any of them and life never existed.
But our luck didn't stop there. Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby (to draw away asteroids), a thousand times more asteroids would strike Earth, potentially producing a blast of heat, followed by years of dust that would freeze or starve us to death. Nearby stars could go supernova, their energy sterilizing the Earth with radiation. These are just a couple of things (out of millions) that could go wrong.
The odds of us existing, concluded Metaxas, "are so heart-stoppingly astronomical that the notion that it all "just happened" defies common sense. It would be like tossing a coin and having it come up heads 10 quintillion times in a row."
Loaded dice? It all makes sense if you assume it's us, the observer, who create space and time. Consider everything you see around you. You can't see through the cranium. In fact, everything you experience is a whirl of information occurring in your head. Space and time are the mind's tools for putting it all together.
In their book, The Grand Design, theoretical physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow stated: "There is no way to remove the observer -- us -- from our perceptions of the world ... In classical physics, the past is assumed to exist as a definite series of events, but according to quantum physics, the past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities."
We -- the observer -- are the first cause, the vital force that collapses the cascade of past spatio-temporal events we call evolution.
I recently bought a 3D television to watch Avatar and have watched it three times. There may well be a universe where a habitable moon like Pandora really exists, and where extraterrestrial beings like the Na'vi live in harmony with nature. The good news is that -- in such a biocentric universe -- there wouldn't be any humans to invadetheir world.
Why the Earth Will Never Be Invaded
Why haven't the Borg invaded the Earth yet? I have watched every episode of Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise, and myriad movies where the Earth is invaded by aliens. I love science fiction. But it is only fiction and will remain so.
Many people, including renowned scientist Stephen Hawking, are also concerned about extraterrestrials invading the Earth. "To my mathematical brain, the numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational," said Hawking "I imagine they might exist in massive ships... looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach."
Last week, late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel asked President Obama about Area 51 and UFOs; and just last May, two top astronomers told Congress that it would be "bizarre if we are alone" and asked for continued funding to detect extraterrestrial life. If you extrapolate "there are a trillion planets in the galaxy," said Seth Shostak, an astronomer at the SETI Institute "That's a lot of places for life." Dan Werthimer, director of the SETI Research Center added "It would be a cramped mind that didn't wonder what other life is out there."
So where is ET? Since the 1960s, Soviet scientists, NASA and others have been searching the cosmos for signs of intelligent life. Scientists estimate the universe contains more than 100 billion galaxies (our own Milky Way alone is home to around 300 billion stars). According to the late Carl Sagan, there should be about a septillion -- 1 followed by 24 zeros -- planets capable of supporting life. Surely, in this lapse of suns, advanced life would have evolved somewhere if life and consciousness were just random accidents. Yet despite half-a-century of scanning the sky, astronomers have failed to find any evidence of life, which our radio telescopes should be able to easily detect.
Scientists note that extraterrestrials should have had enough time to have colonized the entire galaxy. Did they blow themselves up or is the problem more fundamental? In a recent Wall Street Journal editorial, Eric Metaxas wrote, "What happened? As our knowledge of the universe increased, it became clear that there were far more factors necessary for life than Sagan supposed. His two parameters grew to 10 and then 20 and then 50, and so the number of potentially life-supporting planets decreased accordingly. The number dropped to a few thousand planets and kept on plummeting... As factors continued to be discovered, the number of possible planets hit zero, and kept going. In other words, the odds turned against any planet in the universe supporting life, including this one. Probability said that even we shouldn't be here."
Yet, here we are on this warm little planet at just the right time in the history of the universe: The molten earth has cooled, but it's not too cold. And it's not too hot; the sun hasn't expanded enough to melt the Earth's surface with its searing gas yet. Even setting aside the issue of being here and now, the chance of random physical laws and events leading to this point borders on a statistical impossibility.
A scientific theory, biocentrism, provides the explanation -- and predicts we're alone. Although evolution does a terrific job of helping us understand the past, it fails to capture the driving force. It needs to add the observer to the equation. Indeed, "When we measure something we are forcing an undetermined, undefined world to assume an experimental value," said Nobel physicist Niels Bohr "We are not 'measuring' the world, we are creating it."
Cosmologists propose that the universe was until recently a lifeless collection of particles bouncing against each other. It's presented as a watch that somehow wound itself up, and that will unwind in a semi-predictable way. But they have ignored a critical component of the cosmos because they don't know what to do with it. This component, consciousness, is an utter mystery. How did inert, random bits of matter ever morph into Obama or Lady Gaga?
To understand what's going on requires an understanding of how the observer, our presence, plays a role. According to the current paradigm, the universe and the laws of nature just popped into existence out of nothingness. From the Big Bang until the present time, we've been incredibly lucky. This good fortune started from the moment of creation; if the Big Bang had been one-part-in-a-million more powerful, the universe would have rushed out too fast for galaxies to have developed. There are over 200 physical parameters like this that could have any value but happen to be exactly right for us to be here. Change any of them and life never existed.
But our luck didn't stop there. Without a massive planet like Jupiter nearby (to draw away asteroids), a thousand times more asteroids would strike Earth, potentially producing a blast of heat, followed by years of dust that would freeze or starve us to death. Nearby stars could go supernova, their energy sterilizing the Earth with radiation. These are just a couple of things (out of millions) that could go wrong.
The odds of us existing, concluded Metaxas, "are so heart-stoppingly astronomical that the notion that it all "just happened" defies common sense. It would be like tossing a coin and having it come up heads 10 quintillion times in a row."
Loaded dice? It all makes sense if you assume it's us, the observer, who create space and time. Consider everything you see around you. You can't see through the cranium. In fact, everything you experience is a whirl of information occurring in your head. Space and time are the mind's tools for putting it all together.
In their book, The Grand Design, theoretical physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow stated: "There is no way to remove the observer -- us -- from our perceptions of the world ... In classical physics, the past is assumed to exist as a definite series of events, but according to quantum physics, the past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a spectrum of possibilities."
We -- the observer -- are the first cause, the vital force that collapses the cascade of past spatio-temporal events we call evolution.
I recently bought a 3D television to watch Avatar and have watched it three times. There may well be a universe where a habitable moon like Pandora really exists, and where extraterrestrial beings like the Na'vi live in harmony with nature. The good news is that -- in such a biocentric universe -- there wouldn't be any humans to invadetheir world.
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
PERSONAL: FINDING THIS TYPE OF WOMAN
When you find that type of woman – you never let her go. I am looking for a woman who makes me smile just by thinking of her. Not just when I talk to her, or when I am with her, or when I come across a photo of her online – but I am simply think of her (which is often) or see something that reminds me of her. I smile not just because of who she is, but what she stands for. Happiness, excitement, hope, and possibilities for the future.This type of woman makes you realize why it never worked out with anyone else.
We all have a past. We have all experienced heartbreak, we have broken up with others and had them break up with us. We have laughed and cried and had to move on from relationships we may have never thought would end – but when a woman who is truly right for you comes into your life, she will open your eyes to things you may not have realized were lacking in previous relationships.
The type of woman who loves everything about you that the wrong women took for granted.Not everyone will appreciate your kindness, your giving nature, or your selflessness.The fact is that some people just will not appreciate you for you – but the right person will.
The type of woman who respects those who are important to you.I always remember my parents saying when I was growing up – “when you marry someone, you don’t just marry them – you marry their whole family.” While this is more true in some situations than others, more than likely you will be around your partner’s family during holidays or special occasions at the very least – far more frequently at the most. While we cannot be expected to like every person we come in contact with, showing respect and courtesy to each other’s families, friends, and anyone important in lives is essential to making everyone happy in the long term.
Dating has become so casual today that people are all about just living in the moment. Hooking up, taking things a day at a time, whatever happens happens. While this is all well and good for awhile or in younger ages, eventually most people will reach a point where they wonder exactly what they’ve been doing this whole time. While I don’t think any experience is a waste of time, per-say, I do think our time is better used building something that has the potential to last in the long term.
Perhaps one of the most important points of all – it doesn’t matter how attracted we will be to each other or how well we will get along, if we view the world from completely opposite ends of the spectrum, finding synergy within our relationship will be a constant challenge. For example, do you place the same importance on family? I have recently really began to understand the importance of being with someone who perhaps there was a similar upbringing, or at least an instilling of values as what you had. There is a big difference between making compromises for someone and having to change your entire view of the world. One can work out, the other likely cannot.
Every single person reading this has a different image in their head of what happiness looks like. We all have different pasts, experiences, upbringings, and backgrounds. We are from different parts of the world and hold different ideals and expectations. But, we do all have one thing in common: We want to be happy.
Regardless of any mental checklist we may define in our heads, regardless of where someone is from or what social class they are a member of, the most important thing we can ever ask for is that we are simply with someone who makes us happy. When two people find and feel this way about each other, I truly believe they will find a way to make things work. They will overcome the hard times and celebrate the good times. They will work through challenges together and come out the other side smiling bigger and stronger than before – because that’s what teams do.
The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside of me,She had become a physical necessity.If you’re ever lucky enough to find a girl who is a hopeless romantic with a dirty mind, you should hold onto that. Because she’ll be yours at two in the morning and at two in the afternoon the following day. She’ll kiss you where it hurts and until it hurts. And that’s important. Someone who not only knows how to turn you on but also knows how to treat you right is someone worth a little something…and a little more than usual. When I do find this type of woman, I will make sure I will hold on to her. I won’t have to worry about losing her, because she will be holding on to me, too.
I am really good at starting conversations and keeping them going. That being said, I’m really tired of going on dates and not feeling like there’s no give and take. I’m tired of asking all the fun questions! And I’m so sick of the standard “date” questions. It’s really, REALLY attractive when people ask well thought out questions that at least give the illusion that they want to know me better. And I mean REALLY know me. Not just know where I went to college and what I do for a living..
So here ya go. 30 questions I will bust out on you on our date
1. Who inspires you? Who do you aspire to be like?
2. What was the last book you read without skipping through anything?
3. What is the weirdest scar you have and how did you get it?
4. What is the most random thing you’ve ever watched all the way through on Netflix?
5. If you could trade lives with one person for an entire day who would it be and why?
6. Do you believe in ghosts?
7. Shark diving, bungee jumping, or sky diving?
8. Which would be harder for you to give up: coffee or alcohol?
9. How did you meet your best friend?
10. Do you have a sweet tooth or a savory tooth?
11. What is something you’ve always wanted to try but have been too scared to?
12. What accomplishments are you most proud of?
13. If you were going to go to the movies alone, what would be the perfect film for you to watch by yourself?
14. What is your favorite Wikipedia article? (Shuddup. Everyone has one.)
15. What is your favorite physical attribute about yourself?
16. Tell me about the best vacation you’ve ever taken.
17. Where is your favorite place to go on a weekday afternoon when you have no plans or obligations?
18. What is one of the weirdest things you used to do as a teenager?
19. Gin, vodka, or tequila?
20. What drives you to do what you do? What motivates you?
21. In your opinion, what is the best Disney movie to come out since Disney’s Golden Age?
22. What kind of phone was your first cell phone?
23. What did you love most about the place you grew up? What about it did you love the least?
24. What trajectory are you hoping to push yourself onto? Where do you want to head?
25. What is your most bizarre talent?
26. Is there a documentary or book that really changed the way you thought about something?
27. What are three albums (soundtracks or compilations don’t count) that really define you or have shaped you as a person?
28. Who was someone you really looked up to when you were little — someone you considered to be a mentor?
29. What’s your favorite cheesy pick-up line? Have you ever used it for real?
30. Who is a character from a TV show or a book that you’ve always resonated with?
31. Can I get you another drink?
We all have a past. We have all experienced heartbreak, we have broken up with others and had them break up with us. We have laughed and cried and had to move on from relationships we may have never thought would end – but when a woman who is truly right for you comes into your life, she will open your eyes to things you may not have realized were lacking in previous relationships.
The type of woman who loves everything about you that the wrong women took for granted.Not everyone will appreciate your kindness, your giving nature, or your selflessness.The fact is that some people just will not appreciate you for you – but the right person will.
The type of woman who respects those who are important to you.I always remember my parents saying when I was growing up – “when you marry someone, you don’t just marry them – you marry their whole family.” While this is more true in some situations than others, more than likely you will be around your partner’s family during holidays or special occasions at the very least – far more frequently at the most. While we cannot be expected to like every person we come in contact with, showing respect and courtesy to each other’s families, friends, and anyone important in lives is essential to making everyone happy in the long term.
Dating has become so casual today that people are all about just living in the moment. Hooking up, taking things a day at a time, whatever happens happens. While this is all well and good for awhile or in younger ages, eventually most people will reach a point where they wonder exactly what they’ve been doing this whole time. While I don’t think any experience is a waste of time, per-say, I do think our time is better used building something that has the potential to last in the long term.
Perhaps one of the most important points of all – it doesn’t matter how attracted we will be to each other or how well we will get along, if we view the world from completely opposite ends of the spectrum, finding synergy within our relationship will be a constant challenge. For example, do you place the same importance on family? I have recently really began to understand the importance of being with someone who perhaps there was a similar upbringing, or at least an instilling of values as what you had. There is a big difference between making compromises for someone and having to change your entire view of the world. One can work out, the other likely cannot.
Every single person reading this has a different image in their head of what happiness looks like. We all have different pasts, experiences, upbringings, and backgrounds. We are from different parts of the world and hold different ideals and expectations. But, we do all have one thing in common: We want to be happy.
Regardless of any mental checklist we may define in our heads, regardless of where someone is from or what social class they are a member of, the most important thing we can ever ask for is that we are simply with someone who makes us happy. When two people find and feel this way about each other, I truly believe they will find a way to make things work. They will overcome the hard times and celebrate the good times. They will work through challenges together and come out the other side smiling bigger and stronger than before – because that’s what teams do.
The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside of me,She had become a physical necessity.If you’re ever lucky enough to find a girl who is a hopeless romantic with a dirty mind, you should hold onto that. Because she’ll be yours at two in the morning and at two in the afternoon the following day. She’ll kiss you where it hurts and until it hurts. And that’s important. Someone who not only knows how to turn you on but also knows how to treat you right is someone worth a little something…and a little more than usual. When I do find this type of woman, I will make sure I will hold on to her. I won’t have to worry about losing her, because she will be holding on to me, too.
I am really good at starting conversations and keeping them going. That being said, I’m really tired of going on dates and not feeling like there’s no give and take. I’m tired of asking all the fun questions! And I’m so sick of the standard “date” questions. It’s really, REALLY attractive when people ask well thought out questions that at least give the illusion that they want to know me better. And I mean REALLY know me. Not just know where I went to college and what I do for a living..
So here ya go. 30 questions I will bust out on you on our date
1. Who inspires you? Who do you aspire to be like?
2. What was the last book you read without skipping through anything?
3. What is the weirdest scar you have and how did you get it?
4. What is the most random thing you’ve ever watched all the way through on Netflix?
5. If you could trade lives with one person for an entire day who would it be and why?
6. Do you believe in ghosts?
7. Shark diving, bungee jumping, or sky diving?
8. Which would be harder for you to give up: coffee or alcohol?
9. How did you meet your best friend?
10. Do you have a sweet tooth or a savory tooth?
11. What is something you’ve always wanted to try but have been too scared to?
12. What accomplishments are you most proud of?
13. If you were going to go to the movies alone, what would be the perfect film for you to watch by yourself?
14. What is your favorite Wikipedia article? (Shuddup. Everyone has one.)
15. What is your favorite physical attribute about yourself?
16. Tell me about the best vacation you’ve ever taken.
17. Where is your favorite place to go on a weekday afternoon when you have no plans or obligations?
18. What is one of the weirdest things you used to do as a teenager?
19. Gin, vodka, or tequila?
20. What drives you to do what you do? What motivates you?
21. In your opinion, what is the best Disney movie to come out since Disney’s Golden Age?
22. What kind of phone was your first cell phone?
23. What did you love most about the place you grew up? What about it did you love the least?
24. What trajectory are you hoping to push yourself onto? Where do you want to head?
25. What is your most bizarre talent?
26. Is there a documentary or book that really changed the way you thought about something?
27. What are three albums (soundtracks or compilations don’t count) that really define you or have shaped you as a person?
28. Who was someone you really looked up to when you were little — someone you considered to be a mentor?
29. What’s your favorite cheesy pick-up line? Have you ever used it for real?
30. Who is a character from a TV show or a book that you’ve always resonated with?
31. Can I get you another drink?
Monday, March 16, 2015
ARTICLE: Review of "The Wild Oats Project: One Woman's Midlife Quest for Passion at Any Cost" by Robin Rinaldi By Carlos Lozada
Get ready for “The Wild Oats Project.” And not just the book. Get ready for “The Wild Oats Project” phenomenon — the debates, the think pieces, the imitators and probably the movie. Get ready for orgasmic meditation and the Three Rules. Get ready for “My Clitoris Deals Solely in Truth” T-shirts.
Robin Rinaldi, a magazine journalist living in San Francisco by way of Scranton, Pa., initially wasn’t sure she wanted children, but she knew that Scott, her stoic Midwestern husband, did not. Over time, Rinaldi decided a baby would add purpose to their lives, but Scott wouldn’t change his mind. “I wanted a child, but only with him,” she explains. “He didn’t want a child but wanted to keep me.” When Scott opted for a vasectomy, she demanded an open marriage.
“I refuse to go to my grave with no children and only four lovers,” she declares. “If I can’t have one, I must have the other.”
(Sarah Crichton)
If you’re wondering why that is the relevant trade-off, stop overthinking this. “The Wild Oats Project” is the year-long tale of how a self-described “good girl” in her early 40s moves out, posts a personal ad “seeking single men age 35-50 to help me explore my sexuality,” sleeps with roughly a dozen friends and strangers, and joins a sex commune, all from Monday to Friday, only to rejoin Scott on weekends so they can, you know, work on their marriage.
The arrangement is unorthodox enough to succeed as a story, and in Rinaldi’s telling it unfolds as a sexual-awakening romp wrapped in a female-empowerment narrative, a sort of Fifty Shades of Eat, Pray, Love. “I wanted to tell him to f— me hard but I couldn’t get the words out of my mouth” is a typical Rinaldi dilemma. At the same time, she constantly searches for “feminine energy” or her “feminine core” or for a “spiritual practice guided by the feminine.”
But more than empowering or arousing, this story is depressing. Rinaldi just seems lost. Still sorting through the psychological debris of an abusive childhood, she latches on to whatever guru or beliefs she encounters, and imagines fulfillment with each new guy. She still rushes to Scott whenever things gets scary (a car accident, an angry text message), yet deliberately strains their union beyond recovery. “At any cost” are the operative words of the subtitle.
Robin and Scott agree to three rules — “no serious involvements, no unsafe sex, no sleeping with mutual friends” — that both go on to break. He finds a steady girlfriend, while Robin violates two rules right away. “In truth, I was sick of protecting things,” she writes about going condom-free with a colleague at a conference. “I wanted the joy of being overcome.”
The men and women she hooks up with — some whose names Rinaldi has changed, others too fleeting to merit aliases — all blur into a new-age, Bay Area cliche. Everyone is a healer, or a mystic, or a doctoral student in feminist or Eastern spirituality. They’re all verging on enlightenment, sensing mutual energy, getting copious action to the sounds of tribal drums. The project peaks when she moves into OneTaste, an urban commune where “expert researchers” methodically stroke rows of bare women for 15 minutes at a time in orgasmic meditation sessions (“OM” to those in the know). “Everyone here was passionate,” Rinaldi writes. “Everyone had abandoned convention.”
But they are all so uniform in their unconventionality that it’s hard to keep everyone straight. This book needs an org chart.
Rinaldi holds little back, detailing her body’s reactions along the way. At first she is upset that she can’t feel pleasure as quickly as other women, but she finally decides she’s glad that her “surrender didn’t happen easily, that it lay buried and tethered to the realities of each relationship.” Her clitoris, although “moody,” was also “an astute barometer. . . . It dealt solely in truth.”
And truth often comes in tacky dialogue. “Your breasts are amazing,” one of her younger partners tells her. “You should have seen them in my twenties,” Rinaldi boasts. His comeback: “You’re cocky. I dig that.” (Fade to dirty talk.) When they do it again months later, he thanks her in the morning. “Something happens when I’m with you,” he says. “I feel healed.” I’m sure that’s exactly what he feels.
Rinaldi can’t seem to decide why she’s doing all this. The project is her “rebellion.” Or “a search for fresh, viable sperm.” Or a “bargaining chip.” Or “an elaborate attempt to dismantle the chains of love.” Or just a “quasi-adolescent quest for god knows what.”
If exasperation could give you orgasms, this book would leave me a deeply satisfied reader.
One of her oldest friends calls her out. “How is sleeping with a lot of guys going to make you feel better about not having kids?” she asks. Rinaldi’s answer: “Sleeping with a lot of guys is going to make me feel better on mydeathbed. I’m going to feel like I lived, like I didn’t spend my life in a box. If I had kids and grandkids around my deathbed, I wouldn’t need that. Kids are proof that you’ve lived.” It’s a bleak and disheartening rationale, as though women’s lives can achieve meaning only through motherhood or sex.
For all her preoccupation with feminine energy, Rinaldi seems conflicted over feminism. “I would die a feminist,” she writes of her collegiate activism, “but I was long overdue for some fun.” Later, she pictures women’s studies scholars judging her submission fantasies, and frets over “those Afghan women hidden under their burqas” who could be “beaten or even killed right now for doing what I was so casually doing.” But when she finds a sexual connection with a woman who backs away because of “emotional issues,” Rinaldi channels her inner alpha male: “I was drawn to her body but shrunk back when she expressed unfettered feeling. . . . It only took sleeping with one woman to help me understand the behavior of nearly every man I’d ever known.”
When the year runs out, Rinaldi returns to Scott, even though she soon starts an affair with a project flame. She’s no longer so upset about the vasectomy, regarding it as a sign that Scott can stand up for himself (though it may also mean she now cares less about him, period). No shock that post-project, their chemistry is off, and when Rinaldi makes a casual reference to their time apart, Scott finally explodes. “Do you know how many nights I cried myself to sleep when you moved out!?” he asks. “Do you care about anyone’s feelings but your own!?” She was “too stunned to reply.” But the fate of this marriage, revealed in the final pages, is anything but stunning.
“These are the sins against my husband,” Rinaldi recounts. “Abdicating responsibility, failing to empathize with him, cheating and lying.” After blaming him for so long, “in the end, I was the one who needed to ask forgiveness.”
In a rare moment of heartbreaking subtlety, the book’s dedication page simply says “For Ruby,” the name Rinaldi had imagined for a baby girl. Except, “there is no baby,” she writes at the end. “Instead there is the book you hold in your hands.”
And that is a frustrating book, with awkward prose, a perplexing protagonist and too many eye-rolling moments. Yet it is also a book I see launching book-club conversations and plenty of pillow talk — not just about sex and marriage, but about the price and possibility of self-reinvention. You don’t have to write a great work to cause a great stir.
Does Rinaldi reinvent herself? She survives the aftershocks and even seems to discover some happiness, however fragile she knows it to be. So maybe she needed this after all. Or maybe sometimes “empowerment” is just another word for self-absorption.
NY Post Article
Trapped in a marriage where the sex was routine, freelance journalist Robin Rinaldi, now 50, embarked on a 12-month experiment in which she lived apart from her husband during the week and took lovers. As she publishes her memoir, “The Wild Oats Project,” on Tuesday, she talks to The Post’s Jane Ridley about her erotic journey.
Pulling on his pants after our intimate encounter in my Las Vegas hotel room, the cute 23-year-old I’d just picked up holds out his cellphone, urging me to tap in my number.
“You really don’t have to take it,” I say.
Having sex with a stranger is thrilling, but I’m not that interested in a repeat performance.
Two minutes after he’s gone, I climb back into bed and text my husband, Scott, whom I’ve been with for 18 years. “Just saying good night,” I type. “Good night, dove,” writes back Scott from wherever he is.
Scenarios like these were typical during my year of living dangerously — the crazy 12 months in 2008 and 2009 I jokingly call my “Wild Oats Project,” when Scott and I had an open marriage.
Stuck in a rut — our once-a-week sex life was loving, but lacked spontaneity and passion — I was craving seduction and sexual abandon. I was having a midlife crisis and chasing this profound, deeply rooted experience of being female.
Before then, starting a family had felt like one route to this elusive state of feminine fulfillment. But Scott had made it absolutely clear he never wanted a baby, and even had a vasectomy.
Many people will find this hard to understand, but, as the door to motherhood closed, I found myself rushing towards this whole other outlet of heightened female experience — taking lovers.
I’d always been “the good girl,” and had slept with only three guys before getting involved with Scott at the age of 26. I was pretty conservative.
Sexually, I was experiencing what happens to a lot of women in their late 30s and early 40s. I was approaching my sexual peak and was relaxing into myself.
I broke the news to Scott that I wanted an open marriage in early 2008, a few months after his vasectomy. “I won’t go to my grave with no children and four lovers,” I told him repeatedly. “I refuse.”
Against the idea at first, he eventually relented. According to our deal, I’d rent a studio apartment during the week and come back to our home on weekends. Both of us could sleep with whomever we chose as long as we used protection. It was a case of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
My first step was placing an ad on nerve.com, a kind of intellectual version of Craigslist’s Casual Encounters. Under the heading: “Good girl seeks experience,” it read: “I’m a 44-year-old professional, educated, attractive woman in an open marriage, seeking single men age 35-50 to help me explore my sexuality. You must be trustworthy, smart, and skilled at conversation as well as in bed.”
I added: “Our time together will be limited to three dates as I cannot become seriously involved.”
Within 24 hours, my inbox offered up 23 prospective suitors.
Rinaldi was 44 years old when she experimented with an open marriage. She placed the ad above on nerve.com looking for new lovers.
The first lover I met through nerve.com was a 40-something lawyer called Jonathan*. Slim, handsome with glasses and a stylish haircut, he suggested we kiss to test our sexual chemistry. “There’s a lot of heat there,” he said.
On our second date, the following week, he came to my studio after work with a cooler of snacks and some wine. We stumbled to the bed, where he turned me onto my hands and knees and took me from behind.
We had intercourse twice and, after he left, I felt satiated.
Modal Trigger
Robin Rinaldi was 44 years old when she experimented with an open marriage. After talking with her husband, she placed an ad online looking for new lovers.Photo: John Chapple
Around the same time, I took workshops at OneTaste, a sexual-education center, which has branches in New York and San Francisco, where I lived at the time. A sort of “sex-friendly” yoga retreat, it taught me something called orgasmic meditation, which is centered on the woman.
OneTaste was the place where I selected most of my lovers, although I picked up a couple of guys, like the 23-year-old in Vegas, on business trips. OneTaste was populated by cool, open-minded San Franciscans who wanted to expand their horizons.
They included an astrologer named Jude, 12 years my junior. The moment I saw him, I was irresistibly drawn in.
Slightly built and neo-hippy, he was spiritual, calm and centered. I was an Italian, meat-eating, busy magazine editor. But we had a real connection. I became infatuated with him, but the sex soon fizzled.
And then there was Alden, a writer, in his late 30s, who answered my nerve.com post.
“So your ad said only three dates,” he said, as we ate dinner in a crowded restaurant. “Yes,” I replied. Without missing a beat, he reached over and lightly took my fingertips in his. “Do you think we’ll be able to do that, to limit it?”
I loved our conversation, the fact he was a writer, the books he read. Things in the bedroom were mind-blowing and, before I knew it, I was hooked. But I’d made a pledge to my husband that I wouldn’t get involved with any of my lovers. I stuck to that.
And so the year went on. I had lots of “firsts,” including being intimate with women.
But the lessons I learned weren’t purely physical. They were about growing up, making mistakes, learning to live without so much fear, owning up to my dark side and, eventually, finding out the difference between being a “good girl” and a good person.
‘I OWNED UP TO MY DARK SIDE, FINDING OUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING A ‘GOOD GIRL’ AND A GOOD PERSON.’
On weekends, I’d go back to Scott. It wasn’t as strange as you might imagine. I liked it. It was the perfect balance, living on my own during the week and then returning home.
We knew we were both sleeping with other people, but we kept to the rules and never spoke about it. We had sex as always and the open marriage spiced things up — at least at first.
But, by the end of the 12-month project, moving back home full time proved more difficult than I had thought. After you open up a marriage and experience a whole range of sexual variety and aspects of yourself you’ve never had before, it’s hard to put everything back in the box.
You’re changed.
I slept with a total of 12 people (including two women) during the Wild Oats Project.
Suddenly I found an updated version of myself. The person I was at 44 was so much different than the woman I’d been when I was last single at 26. She was less shy, more confident, wilder.
Meanwhile, it turned out that, for around six months, Scott had been exclusively sleeping with one woman, a lot younger than me. That bothered me, especially as they hadn’t been using condoms. But it wasn’t the catalyst for the end of the marriage, because he broke things off with her.
The turning point was hearing from Alden. He sent me an email, out of the blue, several months after the project had come to an end.
Before long, we were having sex again. Being with him was exquisite. After reconnecting with Alden and falling deeply in love with him, there was no going back.
Five years on, Alden and I are happily living together. It’s a regular, monogamous relationship. I’m grateful I experienced my marriage to Scott (who has since found a new partner) but now, for this part of my life, I believe being with someone who is the most temperamentally like me is where I can learn more.
As for not having children, I’m at peace with that, too.
First I channeled the creativity I would have used to become a mom into my sexuality, and then I channeled it into writing my memoir. As my story shows, there are many different ways in life to find passion and fulfillment.
NY Post Article
Trapped in a marriage where the sex was routine, freelance journalist Robin Rinaldi, now 50, embarked on a 12-month experiment in which she lived apart from her husband during the week and took lovers. As she publishes her memoir, “The Wild Oats Project,” on Tuesday, she talks to The Post’s Jane Ridley about her erotic journey.
Pulling on his pants after our intimate encounter in my Las Vegas hotel room, the cute 23-year-old I’d just picked up holds out his cellphone, urging me to tap in my number.
“You really don’t have to take it,” I say.
Having sex with a stranger is thrilling, but I’m not that interested in a repeat performance.
Two minutes after he’s gone, I climb back into bed and text my husband, Scott, whom I’ve been with for 18 years. “Just saying good night,” I type. “Good night, dove,” writes back Scott from wherever he is.
Scenarios like these were typical during my year of living dangerously — the crazy 12 months in 2008 and 2009 I jokingly call my “Wild Oats Project,” when Scott and I had an open marriage.
Stuck in a rut — our once-a-week sex life was loving, but lacked spontaneity and passion — I was craving seduction and sexual abandon. I was having a midlife crisis and chasing this profound, deeply rooted experience of being female.
Before then, starting a family had felt like one route to this elusive state of feminine fulfillment. But Scott had made it absolutely clear he never wanted a baby, and even had a vasectomy.
Many people will find this hard to understand, but, as the door to motherhood closed, I found myself rushing towards this whole other outlet of heightened female experience — taking lovers.
I’d always been “the good girl,” and had slept with only three guys before getting involved with Scott at the age of 26. I was pretty conservative.
Sexually, I was experiencing what happens to a lot of women in their late 30s and early 40s. I was approaching my sexual peak and was relaxing into myself.
I broke the news to Scott that I wanted an open marriage in early 2008, a few months after his vasectomy. “I won’t go to my grave with no children and four lovers,” I told him repeatedly. “I refuse.”
Against the idea at first, he eventually relented. According to our deal, I’d rent a studio apartment during the week and come back to our home on weekends. Both of us could sleep with whomever we chose as long as we used protection. It was a case of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
My first step was placing an ad on nerve.com, a kind of intellectual version of Craigslist’s Casual Encounters. Under the heading: “Good girl seeks experience,” it read: “I’m a 44-year-old professional, educated, attractive woman in an open marriage, seeking single men age 35-50 to help me explore my sexuality. You must be trustworthy, smart, and skilled at conversation as well as in bed.”
I added: “Our time together will be limited to three dates as I cannot become seriously involved.”
Within 24 hours, my inbox offered up 23 prospective suitors.
Rinaldi was 44 years old when she experimented with an open marriage. She placed the ad above on nerve.com looking for new lovers.
The first lover I met through nerve.com was a 40-something lawyer called Jonathan*. Slim, handsome with glasses and a stylish haircut, he suggested we kiss to test our sexual chemistry. “There’s a lot of heat there,” he said.
On our second date, the following week, he came to my studio after work with a cooler of snacks and some wine. We stumbled to the bed, where he turned me onto my hands and knees and took me from behind.
We had intercourse twice and, after he left, I felt satiated.
Modal Trigger
Robin Rinaldi was 44 years old when she experimented with an open marriage. After talking with her husband, she placed an ad online looking for new lovers.Photo: John Chapple
Around the same time, I took workshops at OneTaste, a sexual-education center, which has branches in New York and San Francisco, where I lived at the time. A sort of “sex-friendly” yoga retreat, it taught me something called orgasmic meditation, which is centered on the woman.
OneTaste was the place where I selected most of my lovers, although I picked up a couple of guys, like the 23-year-old in Vegas, on business trips. OneTaste was populated by cool, open-minded San Franciscans who wanted to expand their horizons.
They included an astrologer named Jude, 12 years my junior. The moment I saw him, I was irresistibly drawn in.
Slightly built and neo-hippy, he was spiritual, calm and centered. I was an Italian, meat-eating, busy magazine editor. But we had a real connection. I became infatuated with him, but the sex soon fizzled.
And then there was Alden, a writer, in his late 30s, who answered my nerve.com post.
“So your ad said only three dates,” he said, as we ate dinner in a crowded restaurant. “Yes,” I replied. Without missing a beat, he reached over and lightly took my fingertips in his. “Do you think we’ll be able to do that, to limit it?”
I loved our conversation, the fact he was a writer, the books he read. Things in the bedroom were mind-blowing and, before I knew it, I was hooked. But I’d made a pledge to my husband that I wouldn’t get involved with any of my lovers. I stuck to that.
And so the year went on. I had lots of “firsts,” including being intimate with women.
But the lessons I learned weren’t purely physical. They were about growing up, making mistakes, learning to live without so much fear, owning up to my dark side and, eventually, finding out the difference between being a “good girl” and a good person.
‘I OWNED UP TO MY DARK SIDE, FINDING OUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING A ‘GOOD GIRL’ AND A GOOD PERSON.’
On weekends, I’d go back to Scott. It wasn’t as strange as you might imagine. I liked it. It was the perfect balance, living on my own during the week and then returning home.
We knew we were both sleeping with other people, but we kept to the rules and never spoke about it. We had sex as always and the open marriage spiced things up — at least at first.
But, by the end of the 12-month project, moving back home full time proved more difficult than I had thought. After you open up a marriage and experience a whole range of sexual variety and aspects of yourself you’ve never had before, it’s hard to put everything back in the box.
You’re changed.
I slept with a total of 12 people (including two women) during the Wild Oats Project.
Suddenly I found an updated version of myself. The person I was at 44 was so much different than the woman I’d been when I was last single at 26. She was less shy, more confident, wilder.
Meanwhile, it turned out that, for around six months, Scott had been exclusively sleeping with one woman, a lot younger than me. That bothered me, especially as they hadn’t been using condoms. But it wasn’t the catalyst for the end of the marriage, because he broke things off with her.
The turning point was hearing from Alden. He sent me an email, out of the blue, several months after the project had come to an end.
Before long, we were having sex again. Being with him was exquisite. After reconnecting with Alden and falling deeply in love with him, there was no going back.
Five years on, Alden and I are happily living together. It’s a regular, monogamous relationship. I’m grateful I experienced my marriage to Scott (who has since found a new partner) but now, for this part of my life, I believe being with someone who is the most temperamentally like me is where I can learn more.
As for not having children, I’m at peace with that, too.
First I channeled the creativity I would have used to become a mom into my sexuality, and then I channeled it into writing my memoir. As my story shows, there are many different ways in life to find passion and fulfillment.
Saturday, March 14, 2015
SPIRIT: WE ARE ALL EMPTY SPACE
Nobel Prize winning physicists have proven beyond doubt that the physical world is one large sea of energy that flashes into and out of being in milliseconds, over and over again.
It is not complete, nor is it accurate. It is just an interpretation.
Nothing is solid.
This is the world of Quantum Physics.
They have proven that thoughts are what put together and hold together this ever-changing energy field into the ‘objects’ that we see.
So why do we see a person instead of a flashing cluster of energy?
Think of a movie reel.
A movie is a collection of about 24 frames a second. Each frame is separated by a gap. However, because of the speed at which one frame replaces another, our eyes get cheated into thinking that we see a continuous and moving picture.
Think of television.
A TV tube is simply a tube with heaps of electrons hitting the screen in a certain way, creating the illusion of form and motion.
This is what all objects are anyway. You have 5 physical senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste).
Each of these senses has a specific spectrum (for example, a dog hears a different range of sound than you do; a snake sees a different spectrum of light than you do; and so on).
In other words, your set of senses perceives the sea of energy from a certain limited standpoint and makes up an image from that.
It is not complete, nor is it accurate. It is just an interpretation.
All of our interpretations are solely based on the ‘internal map’ of reality that we have, and not the real truth. Our ‘map’ is a result of our personal life’s collective experiences.
Our thoughts are linked to this invisible energy and they determine what the energy forms. Your thoughts literally shift the universe on a particle-by-particle basis to create your physical life.
Look around you.
Everything you see in our physical world started as an idea, an idea that grew as it was shared and expressed, until it grew enough into a physical object through a number of steps.
You literally become what you think about most.
Your life becomes what you have imagined and believed in most.
The world is literally your mirror, enabling you to experience in the physical plane what you hold as your truth … until you change it.
Quantum physics shows us that the world is not the hard and unchangeable thing it may appear to be. Instead, it is a very fluid place continuously built up using our individual and collective thoughts.
What we think is true is really an illusion, almost like a magic trick.
Fortunately we have begun to uncover the illusion and most importantly, how to change it.
What is your body made of?
Nine systems comprise the human body including Circulatory, Digestive, Endocrine, Muscular, Nervous, Reproductive, Respiratory, Skeletal, and Urinary.
What are those made up of?
Tissues and organs.
What are tissues and organs made of?
Cells.
What are cells made of?
Molecules.
What are molecules made of?
Atoms.
What are atoms made of?
Sub-atomic particles.
What are subatomic particles made of?
Energy!
You and I are pure energy-light in its most beautiful and intelligent configuration. Energy that is constantly changing beneath the surface and you control it all with your powerful mind.
You are one big stellar and powerful Human Being.
If you could see yourself under a powerful electron microscope and conduct other experiments on yourself, you would see that you are made up of a cluster of ever-changing energy in the form of electrons, neutrons, photons and so on.
So is everything else around you. Quantum physics tells us that it is the act of observing an object that causes it to be there where and how we observe it.
An object does not exist independently of its observer! So, as you can see, your observation, your attention to something, and your intention, literally creates that thing.
This is scientific and proven.
Your world is made of spirit, mind and body.
Each of those three, spirit, mind and body, has a function that is unique to it and not shared with the other. What you see with your eyes and experience with your body is the physical world, which we shall call Body. Body is an effect, created by a cause.
This cause is Thought.
Body cannot create. It can only experience and be experienced … that is its unique function.
Thought cannot experience … it can only make up, create and interpret. It needs a world of relativity (the physical world, Body) to experience itself.
Spirit is All That Is, that which gives Life to Thought and Body.
Body has no power to create, although it gives the illusion of power to do so. This illusion is the cause of much frustration. Body is purely an effect and has no power to cause or create.
The key with all of this information is how do you learn to see the universe differently than you do now so that you can manifest everything you truly desire.
Saturday, March 7, 2015
THOUGHTS: ALL ABOUT WORRY
It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because if you have no control over them, it makes no sense to worry about them
It makes no sense to worry about things you do have control over because if you got control over them, it makes no sense to worry about them
It makes no sense to worry about things you do have control over because if you got control over them, it makes no sense to worry about them
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