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Nate True's Lucid Dreaming Mask - Like the Novadreamer!

Nate True, who invented the Time Fountain, has made and invented so many things! One of the awesome things that is especially relevant to me, is that he's devised a device that is meant to alert a sleeping, dreaming person, to the fact that they are dreaming. This state of being/activity is called "Lucid Dreaming", and is a subject that I found out about during college, and researched extensively. The device is thus called a Lucid Dreaming Mask.

The only LD mask ever produced in any kind of quantity (that I know of) was called the Novadreamer. It was retailed for somewhere between $120 and $175 (I cannot recall, it's been around 9 years since I first found out about them) and the quantities produced were always bought up quickly, I'm pretty sure, making them scarce, especially when they stopped producing them, Uhhh maybe around 2000. At that point, they were sold on a used-only basis, mostly on e-bay for prices over $200, often $260ish. So the major theme you see with these masks is that they are not terribly inexpensive. That's in part due to the fact that they had lots of settings, options, some had software that came with, and all of this was to help the dreamer fine-tune their experience. A neat point was that the folks who had done the most scientific research and writing on the LD subject were the folks who invented, designed, and sold the mask. So you were supporting the research in a small way.

Nate True's device operates on similar assumptions as the Novadreamer, but he chooses a much simpler way to go about it. It's also much more cost-effective, if you solder at all, you can buy the kit, which costs a mere $30.


If you need more information about Lucid Dreaming, or still don't feel like you have a solid concept of what it is, or why anyone would bother with it, please visit the Lucidity Institute's Lucid Dreaming FAQ. The Lucidity Institute is an organization that has done the majority of scientific and anecdotal research on the subject of LD. They have a slight New-Age bent, in that they are not unfriendly to the ideas of those seeking "Out of Body Experiences" and the like, and I do not favor that type of mysticism, but the Institute also has a very strong foundation in the scientific method, and relies on actual facts and test data involving LD to study it. I agree completely with Nate True, when he says:

I think lucid dreaming in general has been hijacked by the new-age people who try to tack it onto nonsense like astral projection, out-of-body experiences, telepathy, precognition, and so on. That sort of thing hurts the credibility of lucid dreaming as a practice and art form.

I couldn't agree more strongly with this. The practice itself, and the discipline itself are not New-Agey in the slightest. There is plenty of evidence and proof that it is a simple mental discipline, kin to learning a new skill or language, and there is no 'magic' or hokey supernatural beliefs involved. One can see, though, how easy it would be to attach such beliefs or expectations onto the practice, and many do, to the discipline's detriment, in my opinion. Ah well. I simply harvest the good information, while ignoring the mystical add-ons. (Please understand, I do not condemn those who do favor such beliefs, LD-related or otherwise to be 'stupid people' in any way, but I do have a firm opinion that the application of these beliefs to the practice of LD is not good for LD in general.)

I have had many Lucid Dreaming experiences On-Demand, that happened because I intended it, and I've also had many occur spontaneously, simply because I was dreaming, noticed a 'dreamsign', did a reality-test, and determined myself to be dreaming. Noticing 'dreamsigns', or clues that you're probably dreaming, is a thing one can learn, but it is only one weapon in the aspiring Lucid Dreamer's arsenal.

The primary scientist at Stanford University to study Lucid Dreaming scientifically and in-depth is Stephen LaBerge, and he has written several books that I recommend reading when you're researching Lucid Dreaming. His is kind of the "original" work relating to the subject, meaning it was mainly first, and the most legitimate piece of research-based writing on the subject. Visit a list of his books and research papers here. Scroll down on the page, I recommend clicking on "Contents: Chapter outline of the contents of Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming". The entire 6th chapter of the book is available online, there, and it's a good chapter, IMO. That book is the one I suggest you read, if you're only going to read one book on the subject.

I will have to update this post when I get my Lucid Dream Induction Mask assembled and myself trained to it. I will let you know how it works for me! I am excited about the possibilities, I've always wanted one of these things.

Nate True's Time Fountain

So I ran into The Time Fountain while researching Miracle Fruit, and it happened to be a week prior to my 7th Anniversary, so after checking it out, I got ahold of Nate True who invented and makes them, and found out that he lives not 80 miles away from me! He mailed it off, (In economical kit form) and I got it the next day. Kanten is extremely excited about soldering it, and getting it all put together. I'll have to post updates on the process, and post lots of pictures and videos of the finished product! Kanten even has a neat idea of how to jazz it up a little, to make it a little more presentable to have sitting around the house, he's really getting into it!

The Time Fountain is a device that includes a small water pump, which powers a dripper, that drips at a very regular rate. In addition, strobe lights flash at extremely fast speeds, illuminating the drops at exact frequencies. The results are stunning, especially because the water is colored with florescent dye, and the strobe lights are UV LED's. ^_^ The lights can be manipulated to cause the droplets to appear to be frozen in space, to drip in slow motion, and even to drip backwards. This will be a very neat conversation piece that will interest all ages and types. I think I'm going to love it, too!

More updates and links soon.

Miracle Fruit / Miraculin - Sour to Sweet!

I've recently spent a lot of time researching Miracle Fruit, an African berry that, after you eat it, makes your brain percieve sour tastes as sweet instead. People have been known to chow down on limes, lemons, and grapefruit as if they were wonderful ripe peaches or something, after eating a miracle fruit, -and they enjoyed it immensely.

Debbie Elliot, an NPR correspondent, host of All Things Considered interviewed a man who is writing a book about Miracle Fruit. This interview was available only as an NPR streaming audio file, I've taken the liberty of transcribing it for my readers. (Jott.com helped...)

This weekend, Washington DC is showing its "softer" side. The city's cherry blossoms are erupting into pale pink bloom. The display is the legacy of David Fairchild, a botanist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who introduced 20,000 exotic plants to this country. In 1910, he asked Japanese officials for the original shipment of cherry trees. A few years later, he travelled to West Africa, and brought back a magical berry. The "Miracle Fruit" as it is called, does an amazing thing to your taste buds. You pop one into your mouth and the next thing you eat tastes sweeter. A lemon becomes lemonade! A bologna sandwich: cake! Adam Leith Gollner is currently writing a book about miracle fruit, and joins us from the studio of CBC in Montreal, - Hello there! [Adam:] Hello!

[Hostess:] So scientists have been studying just how miracle fruit works that magic on our tongues, what have they been able to figure out? Well, basically after you eat a miracle fruit and that pleasant squirt of juice coats your tongue, that juice contains a fascinating protein called "Miraculin." -Sounds like something out of superman. "Miraculin." *chuckles* Miraculin is basically a protein, with some little sugars attached to it. Those sugars are just out of reach of the sweet receptors on your tongue, so what happens is that, in a kind of biochemical quirk, the sweet receptors keep trying to get a hold of those sugars, almost like a donkey who keeps trying to bite a carrot, -but only when you eat a sour food, -like a lemon,- can the the donkey suddenly grab the carrot. The sugar molecules pop into the sugar receptors, which sends sweetness signals to your brain and you start tasting sweetness. Does it make all food tastes sweeter? No, no, it only makes sour foods taste sweeter, so, the key that unlocks our taste receptors is sour food. So things like lemon, limes, pickles... -Pickles taste like honey after you eat Miracle Fruit. No way. Way. That is weird.

So, Describe for me the miracle fruit. Yeah they're these little red berries that are kind of like the size of a small olive or maybe, the tip of your pinky. Where do they grow? They grow in West Africa in what was known as the gold coast and traditionally, they used it before eating some of their foods like porridges and breads and fermented palm wines that are shockingly sour. These days it isn't used too often because its not really cultivated [there] on any scale, it grows in very inaccessable parts of the rainforest, they use it as a novelty item or a parlor trick, little kids love it, they take it before partying. It sounds like this could be a great trick to use if you were trying to lose weight, or for people who had to curb their sugar intake because they were diabetic, has anyone in the United States ever tried to market Miracle Fruit in this way?

Yes, there is an amazing story that goes back to the 1960s. The US army and the nternational Pharmaceutical industry figured out how the molecule works, how iraculin works, and this young visionary named Bob Harvey started a company that figured out how to synthesize miraculin, and he had millions of dollars invested in plantations all over the world, and he had developed products like a miracle fruit popsicle (that was coated in miraculin so your first lick would be miracle fruit, and then the rest of the popsicle would taste really sweet,) miracle fruit chewing gum, and a miracle fruit soft drink, and all of this stuff was 100% sugar free, but before getting regulatory approval, they started testing it on little kids, --who loved it,-- but the FDA decided that, it hadn't been proven to be safe, so they didn't allow it to be marketed as a food additive.

Well, we found a man named Curtis Mozie in Ft. Lauderdale who grows miracle fruit in a nursery near his home, and he sent us a few berries to try, so we are going to say goodbye to you now Mr. Gollner, thanks for talking with us. Thank you Debbie. And now, the proof is in the pudding, as it were...

Debbie and two friends go on to try lemons, cheese, and coffee after eating their miracle fruits. The cheese was not tart cheese, so it didn't change the flavor much, (nice pre-research, people), and the coffee, which does not have a reputation for being changed much by miraculin, tasted merely a bit sweetened. The lemons, of course, tasted very sweet, like lemonaide. The food-critic type friends of hers made surprised exlaimations as they ate the lemon wedges.



If you're interested in researching Miracle Fruit, here are some great blog entries and articles to read, they are most engrossing!

• This blog entry has a great description of a tasting at a foodie's party:
  Miracle Fruit - I'm a believer! by Jacob Grier in his blog Eternal Recurrence
  
  
  
• The old "Sweet Lime" trick by Donna McVicar Cannon




• This article goes over a restaurant in Japan that is completely based on Miraculin: The Miracle Fruit Cafe & Update Re: Miraculin Tablets

• This is a place in Ghana where you can order Miraculin stuff from: BioResources International, Inc.
  
  

• I realize now, that this Miracle Fruit provider is the same Curtis Mozie referenced in the NPR show... Barzelay.Net: A Miracle Fruit Provider
  
  

• And here at Gothamist, an article that led me from studying the Miracle Fruit, to the Kircher Society, and the Time Fountain, I owe this article a lot: Covert Dining in New York: The Miracle Fruit

I have written to Sina Najafi, the Editor-in-Chief of Cabinet Magazine, referenced in the article linked above, asking her where she got the canned Miracle Fruit from. All my other research on MF does not even hint that canning Miracle Fruits works, or is a good way to preserve Miraculin, and I find that very confusing. But apparently it works just fine. Very intriguing. Anyone who can help me locate this canned Miracle Fruit gets a cookie. A big one.

• Ed Felten, in his blog Freedom to Tinker, documents a tasting he had with some friends/students, and he had this to say: "The grapefruit was stunning, perhaps the best-tasting fruit I have ever eaten." I've heard a similar quote, from a person who doesn't even like grapefruit.
  
  

• And this is the article that started it all! I am interested in exotic fruits of all kinds, so I read this webpage with wide eyes, and heard of Miracle Fruit for the first time. Fruit Tree Descriptions and Photos

The Kircher Society

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I think I must join The Athanasius Kircher Society. According to the site, their purpose is "to perpetuate the spirit and sensibilities of the late Athanasius Kircher, SJ. Our interests extend to the wondrous, the curious, the singular, the esoteric, and the sometimes hazy frontier between the plausible and the implausible — anything that Father Kircher might find inspiring if he were alive today." --So I think it's like Ripley's believe it or Not, but with a little more class. Just my kind of thing. I heard of the society while researching Miracle Fruit, which will be another post, (At the same time, I learned about the Time fountain which will also be posted about.) and after spending hours at their website over the past 2 days, I have to say that it's absolutely enthralling. You have to take some of the more crazy things with a grain of salt, but most of the stuff on there is true, just bizzare.

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I love learning about odd and unusual things. When I was little, my aunt had this series of hardbound books (Published by TIME?) that were all dedicated to strange and unusual people, happenings, science, animals, coincidences, disorders, etc. I found it so fascinating, that she eventually decided to give the books to me, the whole set! I have them around somewhere. Someday when I have a proper house, I'll have to put them on display, for some other kid to visit and become enthralled with.
(I searched for forever, and finally found an ok-quality reference to this series online. Here's all I was able to come up with. http://tinyurl.com/25uw98 I had really been hoping for a description meant to sell the series, so it would have some actual info about the books, phaugh.)

The compulsory "Well, I finally started a blog" first post.

So, I'm finally starting my own blog. I've been coming across so many cool things on the web lately, and I don't really have a good way to share the coolness, short of just sending email links or gmail jabber messages to all my friends, and that's clunky at best. So this is my answer to that problem, I'll just post all my stuff here, and then email all my friends links to my blog, and hassle them with gmail jabber messages to visit same. =P

I'm very opinionated, so I'll use my blog to propagandize the masses with my opinionated opinions. I predict this will make me delirious with joy at least 3 times per week.

There won't be a very congruous theme to this, it will be mostly interesting ideas I come across, and wish to share, along with a fair bit of opinionated propaganda about my causes and persuasions.

Ok, nobody reads the boring first post anyhow, So I'm going to get to the better stuff. Bai!