New York Voodoo Temple- Possessed Spirits.

Photographer Shannon Taggart‘s lifelong fascination with the mysterious Haitian religion of voodoo has taken her to a basement apartment in Brooklyn, where she came face to face with people being possessed by mysterious spirits.

What resulted from Taggart’s experience inside the Flatbush temple run by female priest known as Mambo Rose Marie Pierre is a series of captivating photos called Basement Voodoo, which show the members of her small congregation being taken over by the Loa – powerful spirits that mediate between humans and the voodoo deity, Bondye.

Communicating with the Loa requires elaborate preparations specific to each spirit. While some of the Loa are harmless, others are considered wicked or belligerent.

In order to call on any given spirit, a voodoo practitioner has to draw a symbol associated with that particular Loa in cornmeal on the floor, Time LightBox reported.

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 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2213796/Shannon-Taggart-Machetes-trances-wild-dances-Fascinating-photos-shed-light-VOODOO-rituals.html#ixzz28awdtK7S 

Control Your Dreams …by Sleep Mask

The changes we would like to make daily of Dreams might cause mental Disorder

Dream Control Mask

In a twist straight out of the movie Inception, a duo of developers from Brooklyn, New York, have built a sleeping mask designed to allow people to have lucid dreams that they can control.

While it may look like a standard sleeping mask, Remee has been billed as a special REM (Rapid Eye Movement) enhancing device that is supposed to help steer the sleeper into lucid dreaming by making the brain aware that it is dreaming.

The goal of the product is to allow people to have the dreams of their choice, from driving a race car to flying to having lunch with Abraham Lincoln.

In the hit movie Inception, directed by Christoper Nolan and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, a team of corporate spies enter a man’s dream to plant an idea into his subconscious. It is set in a world where technology exists to enter the human mind through dream invasion,

Nolan was said to have come up with the idea ten years ago.

The futuristic invention is the brainchild of Duncan Frazier and Steve McGuigan, both aged 30, who have started a company named Bitbanger Labs.

The two friends put up their project on the crowd funding website Kickstarter with the goal of raising $35,000. By this week, more than 6,550 people pledged $572,891 to fund Remee.

The inside of the sleeping mask features a series of six red LED lights that are too faint to wake the sleeper up, but visible enough for the brain to register them.

The lights can be programed to produce a sequence designed by the user.

Sleep stages are divided into two main categories: non-REM and REM. People go back and forth between these stages throughout the night, with REM stages, where most dreaming occurs, lasting the longest towards morning.

Remee apparently notices these longer REM stages and ‘enters’ the dream via the flashing lights. The device will wait for four to five hours for the sleeper to get into the heavy REM stages before the red lights turn on.

The idea is simple: you are playing a perfect round of golf in a dream, and you see a pattern of red lights flashing in the distance.

Because the pattern is in a particular sequence, it would signal to you that you are dreaming, not unlike the totem object in Inception.
 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2147181/Dream-come-true-Two-mad-scientists-create-sleep-mask-lets-people-CONTROL-dreams.html#ixzz1vWLpM0Pt

New York Times Moves Contents.

Image via Wikipedia

 

Make Good Business sense and saves readers time.

Following is another way of looking at this.

Ultimately we shall be paying for reading on-line.

Funnily this move could boost the print media.

NEW YORK—In an effort to highlight content of interest to the subscribers it values most,The New York Times announced Monday it would move all articles you could not possibly give a shit about unless you make more than $200,000 into one handy section. “From now on, people looking for helpful hints on renovating a $4 million Manhattan townhouse won’t have to waste time sifting through articles on the crisis of public education,” Times executive editor Bill Keller said of the new section, which will be printed in smudge-proof ink so it doesn’t soil the soft, pink hands of its readers. “They can flip straight to TimesElite for the latest on society weddings, Tuscan getaways, and the rising cost of boat winterization.” Keller added that if the experiment proved successful, the Times might create a similar section for moms in Brooklyn.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-york-times-moves-all-content-you-wont-give-a-s,19188/

Time has decided to dive headfirst into an issue that has bedeviled many a news organization before it: how to cure online readers of their addiction to free content.

But Time’s approach is more a process of weaning readers than forcing them to quit cold turkey. Starting this week, it replaced most of the content that appeared in its current issue with abridged articles and summaries online. The move is meant to drive readers to newsstands and Time’s iPad applications, where the magazine costs $4.99.

Richard Stengel, the managing editor, says Time plans to experiment and will continuously adjust what it decides to keep off its Web site.

“I think we’ll see what works and doesn’t work,” Mr. Stengel said in an interview by phone. “We’ll adapt and change. We’re in the hunt like everyone else to figure this out.”

By pulling its print content off its Web site, Time is taking a step that other American newsweeklies have so far avoided. Whether the move is enough to push more readers into paying for Time content is unclear.

The magazine will continue to make its columnists and vast archives available online. And once an issue is two weeks old, its content will be posted on the site and available to the public.

Time expects its decision to have little effect on its readership online. About 90 percent of the traffic on Time.com involves content that appears only online, the company said.

Another Time Inc. property, People, has left articles from its magazine off its Web site for some time. People’s online editors often try to entice readers by displaying an image of the magazine cover along with an excerpt from the cover article. A small teaser informs readers that if they want more they should go to the newsstand and buy an issue.

Time’s online approach was similar, though it included lengthy excerpts from the week’s magazine articles with the disclaimer: “The following is an abridged version of an article that appears in the July 12, 2010, print and iPad editions of Time.” Eventually the magazine plans to offer an online subscription that will provide readers with access to all Time content.

Edward K. Moran, a media analyst with Deloitte, says Time’s approach is one he expects other media outlets to adopt in the coming months.

“Quite frankly I’m surprised it’s taken this long,” Mr. Moran said. “Everybody wants to jump in the pool, but no one wants to be the first one.”

Mr. Stengel said the decision was an effort to draw a brighter line between what the magazine provided free and what it charged consumers to read.

“We kind of wanted to draw a line in the sand,” he said. “We want to remain a vigorous and important part of the conversation. There are some things that are necessary to be part of that. But we will experiment.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/08/business/media/08time.html