The Visionary Art of Pablo Amaringo

Pablo Amaringo (1938-2009) was a painter from Pucallpa in Peru, whose paintings are all inspired by his experiences with ayahuasca. Amaringo originally worked as a vegetalista which is a traditional word for a shaman in Latin America who works with plants and vegetables to cure physical and spiritual illnesses. He was also part of the mestizo…

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Evolving Machines: What is the Future of Technology?

Moore’s Law, named after the Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore, says that the number of transistors on integrated circuits doubles every two years. Put more simply, computer processing power doubles every two years. Moore noted the trend in 1965 and it has held true ever since then. A super-computer which decades ago took up the…

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E.F. Schumacher Sought to Redesign Economics Based on Sustainability and Well-Being

E.F. Schumacher (1911-1977) was born in Bonn, Germany and would become one of the most influential economic thinkers of the 20th century. His most well-known book, Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (1973) would give weight to the growing environmental concerns of the 70s. Schumacher was writing at a time when the…

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Interesting Facts About Tool’s Music

Here are some interesting facts about Tool’s music, categorised by the band’s albums. Opiate There’s a hidden song at the end of the title track called “The Gaping Lotus Experience”. The line from “Sweat”, “Slipping into a dream within a dream” references Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “A Dream Within a Dream”. Undertow The discordant sounds…

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The Long-Term Effects of Mystical Experiences

It’s difficult to define a mystical experience. What exactly does it involve? Do they all share some basic elements? It’s probably a good idea to broadly define mystical to include the different kinds of experiences that people report as being mystical. What’s also interesting is that it is common for mystical experiences to have lasting effects,…

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