Reviews by Hubie Goode: Still Living With Freud?

After all our advances in science and medicine, Are We Still Living With Freud? Pt. 2

Born in 1856 into a most interesting family, he was the eldest son of his Father’s second wife. He had two step brothers that where as old as his own mother, Amile Nathanson. His father was Jacob Freud. Sigmund had several younger brothers and sisters but also had these 20 something brothers, and later in life he was to consider that his network of family members was responsible for the shaping of his own personality. He admitted that he had a lasting feeling of guilt over the death of a younger brother, since he no longer had to compete for his mother’s love and attention.

For Freud, the slightest remembrancers from a person’s yesteryear were not something to merely mull over casually and then dismiss as the construct of immature perspective mixed with inexperience. Freud believed that his own memories had far more import in the who, why, what and where of his own person than most anyone would bother with today. "Kids will be kids" was not a part of his paradigm. For Freud, memories had a paramount place in his development as an adult, and he believed this to be a universal construct.

When he was quite young, he and his family moved around several times for both economic and anti-Semitic reasons. It was this moving around that led him to believe in later life that his fear of travelling and trains was the result of those experiences. While he was in school he notes, he was considered a top athlete in his physical education classes and was not challenged to pass many examinations for promotion. His own father guided him in the choice of career in telling him to follow his own inclinations, and Freud notes that when in school he had NO inclinations for becoming a physician.

His own biographers note that his school years developed a kind of self confidence that was a major characteristic of his life throughout his remaining years. This explains in part his relative disinterest in conforming, or fitting in and also his reputation for being an oddball. And according to those who have written about his younger years, he was indeed an oddball.

Though part of a Jewish family, he never fully adopted the Jewish religion. He knew that the Jews of his day felt a sense of pride over his affiliation, despite the fact that he never really pronounced or denied his Jewish roots. Regardless, his positions in later life never did include a God who deals with man on a personal basis.

His interest in the naturalistic side of science developed in his later education where he preferred experiments and research in the lab. He received his degree in medicine in 1881 at the age of 25. He took three years longer than most to complete his studies due to all the sideline interests he had.

In 1885 he went to Paris to study with Dr. J. M. Charcot, where he spent the better part of the year in medical practice. A short time later he returned home and opened a medical practice in psychiatry. Although he was immanently more interested in the theory and experimentation than in the actual practice of medicine, he realized that he had to pay the bills with something. This resulted in a medical-psychiatry practice mix.

An early interest in the practice of neurology led Freud to become enamored with the use of cocaine. He believed that one day it would overtake morphium in usefulness. He was convinced of it’s potency and harmlessness and promoted its use in cases involving indigestion and depression, and developed an idea that it could also help in the field of psychotherapy. Unfortunately, there was soon a wave of cocaine addiction in Vienna and he found himself being publicly fingered as an enabler.

This first encounter with controversy painted a picture of what was to come from the house of Freud. Throughout his life he would pursue his own ideas as to what was true even to the cost of his own place among classical medicine, as he was soon ostracized and considered persona non gratat among his contemporaries and civilized society as well. Many who write about him contend that he maintained his position on his own theories with an astonishing stubbornness that belied the obvious truth.

Freud’s achievement was that he turned the realm of the religious gurus, the sideshow hypnotist and the crystal ball reader, the inner unknown, into something resembling a measurable science. (Always keep in mind that science is observable, or it’s not science) The terms science and medicine lending a kind of cache of truth that until that time had remained a fringe concern. He assumed to provide the answers between character and the hidden impulses inside of mankind. He spoke of all impulses being of sexual origins and deciphered dreams, like an Old Testament prophet. He believed that one could find in the stock of mankind’s symbols and legends down through history a kind of collectivity that could not only condense a person’s being but also explain his great unknown.

Working alone at first and then surrounded by disciples at a later time, he stood firm in his theories despite the immense growing crowd of those who rebuffed him from almost every corner of professional and private society. He groped around in his own darkness for several years, trying to find some path to follow, being neither respected or included for his work. He passed from several types of medicine, mastering them and then moving on when they were inadequate to prove his own theories. He went from physiology to neuropathology and then psychopathology with dogged determination to make his own theories somehow coalesce into reality. Eventually, he became the thing for which he was attempting to find verification. He gave birth to psychoanalysis all by himself, and a new so called science was born. Not of proof, but of unwavering determination in a field best left to carnival barkers.

more to come in part 3

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Are We Still Living With Freud?

After all our advances in science and medicine, Are We Still Living With Freud? Pt. 1

What is the wellspring of the human personality? This is a question many have searched the answer for down through our history. Which one of us has not stopped at one time or another to ask.... who am I? Why am I like I am? For many this may seem like a search into the dark passages of the soul. Man’s true nature and the shape of his spiritual being have been defined in more ways, shaped by more theories, and analyzed by more psychic approaches than any other entity on the face of the earth. And surely, the gorillas in the mist have never had such trouble. They simply are gorillas. The problems with humans coming to a satisfying conclusion about these questions is that many who seek those answers simply do not have a clue as to what it is they truly seek. They stumble about in a morass of darkness with no road map, and when they do bump into something, they have only their own sphere of influence and experience to tap into for interpretation of those answers.

Mankind has often assumed total knowledge of his own body. I can say I weight so much, I am so tall, and I can describe myself in objective terms. This also applies to the physical processes. Man believes he has total knowledge of them, also. But the invisible part of himself he still considers to be hiding in the world of shrouded mystery.

This sense of the mysterious is a main reason the religious gurus, county fair fortune tellers, nightclub hypnotists, and college professors have been given so much attention by the world at large. In no other subject does the common man feel more lost than in trying to understand the unseen spirit and soul that he believes lives within all of us. How many times have we seen people we know have melt downs or unusual behavior episodes only to leave us aghast and wondering: Where did THAT come from? We all understand that there is still much about ourselves that we do not know, and even less understood that bubbles up from the dark depths inside each one of us. From no known source did an answer seem to be arriving in any way satisfying to the questioning soul.... and then it happened.

There broke upon the world the voice, writings, and strange perceptions of a man who seemed to discover how to define the nuances of the psyche. His answers seemed not only intellectual and scholarly, but they were scientific, provocative and titillating. Yep, a man from the world of science touched and seduced an age as none had done before or have done since.

His name was Sigmund Freud. His profession was Psychoanalysis. Before he was done, the world would submit itself to his therapy. In his small lifetime he has had an influence both superficial and profound upon the lives of millions and also on the spirit of his age. Few of us in the western world have been unable to escape his influence. In fact, we automatically think along the lines of this man’s definition of human personality with little regard for truth, on a daily basis, all without thinking about it. It just seems normal and right.

Let’s talk about that.... more to come next time

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Let’s Talk About Mental Leverage, Pt. 8

Build A Mental Word Bank of Dynamic Words and Expressions

One of the ways people make internal judgements about us is by the words we use, and the way we use them. Therefore, your verbal skills and your vocabulary have a lot to do with your success in life.

You don’t need a huge vocabulary to impress other people. In fact, if you just added 100 to 200 words, that is probably all you would need. Therefore; if you pick the right words to learn, they can do the work of 1000 or more.

Once again, this is an advantage of mental leveraging. You will not need to take expensive vocabulary courses, or memorize long lists of words. There is no need at all to learn big words either, unless, of course they have to do with your occupation.

All you need is a natural way to expand your vocabulary in a way that will impress people that you are indeed intelligent without being pedantic. Um, that is, a “show off”.

Keep a small notebook in your pocket at all times, so that whenever you see or hear a word you don’t fully understand write it down. Then later, when you have time, look up the words you have acquired. Once you have determined what they mean, try to recall how they were used when you read or heard them. Think about them in that context and other possible uses for them. Decide which ones you want to keep.

Start using them in your conversation, get comfortable with them, and this will firm them up in your memory. My father once told me that if you use a word five times, it’s yours. (Good luck with Antidisestablishmentarianism. heh.)

From time to time go over the words you have collected and revisit their possible use in your vocabulary. The results can be dramatic if you are looking to move up in a company that uses lots of college graduates. The more “high falutin’” words you use in an upwardly mobile arena, the more assumptions will play in your favor. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck....

One more thing you can try is to read more material by writers who are above your level. So let’s say you don’t really understand much of what’s in the Wall Street Journal. You can pull random articles from that periodical and with a dictionary, slowly increase your level of understanding, if not for the overall information, then certainly for the basic uses of the words that may be on the outside of your usual conversation pool.

And, of course, as I do here, you could start writing a blog. Trying to use a higher form of vocabulary without sacrificing meaning. This is a little more work if you are not ready for it, but it can really help you to internalize a more sophisticated form of speech in everyday life. If you can write for an audience that is above you in the educational ranks, and still make a valid communication, then you are on your way to joining them. Good luck.

inherit the wind, scopes trial, scopes, evolution, science

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Debunking the Scopes 'Monkey Trial' Stereotype

By Edward Sisson

Whenever a challenge to the truth of Darwinian evolution arises, the scientific establishment and its allies trot out the Scopes Money Trial. It is their position that if the scientific establishment has ratified a science textbook, such as the book from which Scopes taught evolution, the state should not engage in "censoring" the material in that book.

The Scopes Monkey Trial plays such a prominent role in the debate that I purchased a copy of the transcript; a copy of the textbook from which Scopes taught, A Civic Biology; and a copy of the companion lab guide to that textbook. Review of these source materials-very different from the biased picture presented in Inherit the Wind-was a real eye-opener.

In the Scopes trial, there was never any judgment or verdict that Darwinian evolution is true. The prosecution argued and the judge agreed that the Tennessee statute in question barred the teaching of the Darwinian theory even if it were true, so its truth was not an issue in the case. Nor, notably, was the truth of the theory of Darwinian evolution and the supposed evidence for it ever subjected to cross-examination. Scopes' lawyers presented extensive written statements from seven scientists stating that Darwinian evolution is the correct explanation for the diversity of life on earth. The prosecution sought permission to cross-examine the five pro-Darwinian science experts whose statements had been read in open court, but Clarence Darrow and the other Scopes lawyers objected and the court refused to allow it.

Nor, ironically, given the popular understanding of the case as a disproof of Christian fundamentalism, was fundamentalism technically an issue in the case. The Tennessee statute did not mandate the teaching of fundamentalism. The statute merely barred the teaching of Darwinian evolution.

But Darrow and the defense team wished to make fundamentalism the issue, and they succeeded. Prosecution lawyer William Jennings Bryan agreed to be questioned by Darrow on his personal interpretation of the Bible (the famous examination shown in a false light in Inherit the Wind) only if Darrow agreed to be questioned on the evidence for evolution-and the judge agreed that Bryan could question Darrow after Darrow questioned Bryan. The bargain by Bryan, submitting to examination so that he could examine Darrow, was a last-ditch attempt to place some criticism of Darwinian evolution into the Scopes trial record to counteract the one-sided, unchallenged presentation of the pro-Darwin side.

But Darrow, after his famous examination of Bryan, surprised Bryan by announcing that he had no defense to present, and asking the judge to instruct the jury to find Scopes guilty. In substance, Darrow was changing Scopes' plea to guilty, but by using the technical approach of a request for a "directed verdict" against his own client, Darrow avoided a waiver of Scopes' right to appeal. Scopes' effective switch to a plea of guilty closed the evidence and made it impossible for Bryan to call Darrow to the stand to question him on evolution.

Darrow's claim that he had no factual defense to present was patently false. In fact, John Scopes never actually taught evolution; he was sick on the class day evolution was scheduled, so he never delivered the lecture. His failure to actually teach evolution was an excellent defense: in fact Scopes was innocent, and a lawyer who was actually representing Scopes' interests - rather than the ACLU's interest - would have featured that fact prominently. (But the prosecution deserves blame as well; surely the prosecutors, too, knew that Scopes never delivered the lecture.)

Moreover, Darrow could easily have abandoned his defense before his examination of Bryan; the fact that Darrow requested the guilty verdict only after he conducted his examination of Bryan indicates that his intention all along was to use Bryan to challenge Christian fundamentalism and then to escape any challenge to the theory of Darwinian evolution.

The result was that in the Scopes Monkey Trial, scientists presented their case for Darwinian evolution without any challenge in the trial to the merits of whether the data they offered really showed that the Darwinian theory was true. Nor was there any review of the scientists' arguments in the appeal. Darrow won the appeal on a technicality - the trial court broke a technical rule in assessing the fine.

There is, however, this priceless comment in the appellate concurring opinion of Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Chambliss. He noted that Scopes' lawyers prominently featured this statement from Prof. Reinke of Vanderbilt University:

"The theory of evolution is altogether essential to the teaching of biology …. To deny the teacher of biology the use of [evolution] would make his teaching as chaotic as an attempt to teach … physics without assuming the existence of the ether."

Well. There is no physics course taught in any high school today that "assum[es] the existence of the ether." The concept was abandoned decades ago. In fact, the progress of physics accelerated with the abandonment of the "ether" concept. The progress of biology might also accelerate with the abandonment of Darwinian evolution.

Darwinian evolution's escape from proper cross-examination is long-standing. Cambridge University Astrophysics Prof. Sir Fred Hoyle, in his book critical of Darwinism, The Mathematics of Evolution, wrote that the scientific challenges to Darwinian evolution have "never had a fair hearing" because "the developing system of popular education [from Darwin's day to the present] provided an ideal opportunity for zealots who were sure of themselves to overcome those who were not, for awkward arguments not to be discussed, and for discrepant facts to be suppressed."

Examination of Scopes's text book, A Civic Biology, demonstrates another important lesson about whether the scientific establishment should receive the great deference it demands from our school boards concerning what should be taught in our schools. A Civic Biology and its companion lab book both contain sections on eugenics-introduced by the statement that "[t]he science of being well born is called eugenics." The scientific establishment of the time fully supported this "science" of eugenics. This endorsement by the scientific establishment meant that eugenics was taught in our schools.

Here is what the scientific establishment of that time caused schoolchildren to learn. The Scopes textbook, Hunter's A Civic Biology, divided humanity into five races and ranked them in terms of superiority, concluding with "the highest type of all, the Caucasians, represented by the civilized white inhabitants of Europe and America." A Civic Biology asserted that crime and immorality are inherited and run in families, and that "these families have become parasitic on society. . . . If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off. . . . [W]e do have the remedy of separating the sexes in asylums or other places and in various ways preventing intermarriage and the possibilities of perpetuating such a low and degenerate race." The lab book, at Problem 160, asks students to use inheritance charts "[t]o determine some means of bettering, physically and mentally, the human race," and a "Note to teachers" says that "[t]he child is at the receptive age and is emotionally open to the serious lessons here involved."

Of course, the scientific establishment of today would denounce all of this. Thus the very text book from which Scopes taught-the very book that the scientific establishment of today proclaims Scopes ought to have been able to use in 1925 without any interference by the state-includes material that today the scientific establishment rejects. Eugenics, like the "ether," once thought so essential, has vanished from the curriculum - has "vanished into the ether," one is tempted to say. Yet science continues ever healthier despite the loss of these theories. And science would remain healthy if Darwinian evolution, too, "vanished into the ether."

Thus the important question is whether the rest of the world should wait for the science establishment to catch up before deciding to reject paradigms that have hung on in our textbooks for years, despite manifold and rapidly-accumulating flaws.

If we cast ourselves back to 1925 and ask ourselves whether it would have been proper for the State of Tennessee then to have adopted a law that permitted the teaching of eugenics as the scientific establishment demanded, but that required that challenges to the theory also be taught-would not everyone today applaud the foresight of the state in enacting such a law? Would we not all agree that if such a "science" of eugenics had to be taught in our schools because of the insistence of the scientific establishment, that it would be appropriate also to teach the flaws in that "science"?

The hypothetical example of a state law mandating that doubts about the "science" of eugenics be taught demonstrates that it is appropriate for the people who determine our school curricula not to be slavishly bound to adhere to whatever the scientific establishment espouses at any given time. Instead, the population at large-who are free from the institutional incentives and biases that can and do affect the judgment of members of the scientific establishment-are entirely within their rights to doubt a theory before the scientific establishment might similarly doubt that theory. This kind of approach is well-accepted in other fields where the government significantly affects the lives of the people: for example, while we listen respectfully to military officers who state the need for more weapons, we reserve to the people's chosen representatives the final decision.

Where tens of millions of dollars of funding, and the education of tens of millions of children, are at stake, the recipients of the funds and the purveyors of the education deserve respect but should not hold the final say over their own funding and their own jobs. They are not as free from self-interested bias as they flatter themselves they are. Too often, to us the parents, the science establishment's claim to be motivated only by the well-being of our children appears tainted by a self-interested desire that our children flatter their teachers' egos by believing everything their teachers believe. Indeed, Darwinians, who claim that all of life is motivated by an irresistible drive for survival, which necessarily means a drive for power, are poorly positioned to claim a special exemption from the very force they say rules life. To the contrary, we are justified in considering that they may be particularly susceptible to the operation of the very theory they advocate so vehemently. In a democracy, the final decisions in these matters must rest with the people who provide the funding and who are the parents who give birth to, raise, and support the children who are in the government's schools. School boards ought to give serious consideration to encouraging the development of suitable curriculum materials by which to present to students the data and analysis that show the weaknesses in the Darwinian theory - weaknesses that are sufficiently significant that this teaching may even cause students to doubt that the Darwinian explanation is true.

Edward Sisson - Biographical note for evolution/intelligent design

Edward Sisson earned a Bachelor of Science from MIT (major in architecture) in 1977, and graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in 1991. In 2004 he contributed an essay to the book "Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing." In 2005 he participated on the side of the "Darwin doubters" in the Kansas "evolution hearings," spoke at the "Uncommon Dissent" conference in Greenville, South Carolina, and appeared at Boston University's "Great Debate" on the intelligent design controversy. As legal counsel he represented Prof. Caroline Crocker to defend her right to teach college science students some of the flaws in Darwinism. In 2006 he became Executive Director (unpaid) of a new nonprofit, the Iowa Institute, whose aim is to carry-out scientific experiments relevant to the scientific theory of intelligent design.

Reviews by Hubie Goode: Let’s Talk About Mental Leverage, Pt. 7

Enjoy Total Name Recall

One of the tricks salesman use is to overuse someone’s name when pitching to them. Accordingly it can become a type of hypnosis as the listener is consistently addressed and MUST maintain attention in order to comply with the implied request by the mere fact that one’s name is used consistently.

Conversely, one of the easiest ways to lose someone’s attention is to forget their name and not be able to freelance an acceptable response to ease the moment. This makes it look as if you couldn’t care less about the person, and this can hurt you in ways you would be hard pressed to imagine. You can lose friends, business associates, respect, employment opportunities, and career advancements.

Why is it so easy to forget names? The main reason is that they have not learned one fact, Mental Leverage can help you out of a tight jam when you forget or use the wrong name for someone. If you are like me, you remember faces forever, but names just roll right out of your head every time you toss your head to one side. So what can you do?

Here are five steps you can use to get that memory to respond when you need it:

1) Make a conscious decision to remember the name of every single person you run into. Remind yourself of the decision each day and make an effort each time you meet someone new.

2) As you are introduced, make sure you get the person’s name correct and then repeat it several times on purpose. Use it again afterward, when no one is around and picture the person in your mind.

3) Use it again afterward, when no one is around and picture the person in your mind.

4) Associate the name with a physical characteristic, a personality trait or something else that reminds you of that person. Now, don’t do this like the comedy show The Office suggests. Don’t call the bald headed man baldy or shiny. Or use ethnic background as a memory pin. That’s not nice. ;-) But you could picture a skinny person as a hillbilly who says, “I ain’t et all week.” and this will ground your memory.

5) At the end of the day make a written note of each person you met today, and link them frequently with silly associations - associations that are your business and YOUR business alone.

All five steps are important, and if you skip something you weaken your ability to make that long term connection. Remember, if the name is Travelini, you picture someone who travels lean. If the name is Rosenberg, she grows roses on an iceberg. Easy enough?

Review the process at the end of each day and you’ll see how the memory actually improves and makes social contacts smooth and easy.

Reviews by Hubie Goode: What Is Your Life About?

What Gives Meaning To Life?

There was a famous holy man who once wrote about an experience he had:

He was sitting on a beach one bright and beautiful summer day, watching a little boy and girl play in the sand. They were hard at work making an elaborate sand castle. It had gates and towers and moats and such. Just as they had finished the marvel of industrial ingenuity, a large wave came along and knocked it down turning it into a heap of wet sand. He fully expected that the children would scream and cry at the devastation, but instead, they ran up the shore away from the water, laughing and holding hands, and began to build another castle. What an important lesson that was! All those things in our lives, all the complicated structures we spend so much time and energy creating are really built on sand. Only our relationships to one another endure. Sooner or later, the wave will come along and knock down what we have worked so hard to build up. When that happens, only the person who has someone’s hand to hold will be able to laugh.

I remember when I was younger, not necessarily when I was young, coming to the realization that life was not going to unfold like a Disney movie. I chuckle a bit at the resolution of TV shows like The Andy Griffith Show, that today are touchingly quaint and quite out of schism with the world we know today. But mostly, one can see how, if you look back at history, they were also a little out of touch with their own times. The paradigm being, that if you just work hard, were sincere, and didn’t do anything foolish, everything would work out the way you wanted it to.

Conversely, many things do not work out as we would like them, no matter how hard we work, no matter how honest we are, no matter how much we do for our fellow man. (and you ARE doing for your fellow man, right?)

Most of us in our lives have either believed we could or perhaps have valiantly tried to extract what we want from life. We crave for meaning, we demand purpose and we long for something to stay fulfilling and satisfying for the whole of our lives. But life has it’s own ideas. It tends to stare back at us with blank, uncaring eyes and deeply implies the inexorable finality of it’s own indomitable position in reality.

What do we want from life that it seems to have promised but has also seemed to have ignored with it’s own non-proffered ability? We thought we’d get meaning, purpose and love. We thought that we could succeed, that we would matter and perhaps make a difference. And that someone somewhere would care.


If you look again at the ruins of ancient Rome, a once gloriously painted city of stone and mortar, filled with a teaming populace that cared for and enjoyed it’s heightened civilization; you realize that if the buildings could speak, they would cry and wish for oblivion. Time moved on without them. Their people, their creators no longer walk their roads and tread down their halls. It’s a good thing for them they ARE just stone and brick and cement, for what soul could live with such long term abandonment?

But what if things are different for us? What if things are just beginning when we come to the place where we realize that if we had not lived as long as we have, or if we had perhaps not be born, that the world would have gone on without us? What if it’s a privileged to come to the end of our questions and have no answers?

When you reach a critical juncture in your life, that point where failure and hopelessness seem inevitable. We must seize the day! We must grasp the moment! Kick and spit and growl all you want, but when you come to the end of yourself, all you have left is the reality of God. And there is the place where you will find the deepest answers, no matter how much you want to live in denial, no matter how much you want it to be something else, something that makes YOU feel good or promotes the pride of life and mankind as a force to be celebrated. If it were not so, then your inner soul would be satisfied with those things, you would have found an answer there instead of a million different offerings provided from the world for the world. I once asked an adult, when I was a teen, what life was all about. And they told me it’s different for different people... no it’s not, that’s just their programming speaking, not a reality.

One of the promises of God is that even the most evil of persons can be saved from and eternity without him if they will only call on the name of Jesus. Even if that person is on his deathbed, having not done anything worthy himself. But unfortunately, our pride and dependence on cursed flesh guides us to take a multitude of answers that are NOT Jesus, down blind alleys that twinkle in front of our eyes like a Christmas ornament in front of a kitten or car keys in front of a baby, and we like it, and we reach out for it. And we fail to find those answers we long for.

It wasn’t all that long ago, that a favorite singer of mine committed suicide. He gassed himself to death and left behind a note to his fiance’ explaining his actions. In the note he told of how much of a lonely soul he was. The implication here is that he, like us all, was seeking an answer to his unhappiness, a cure if you will, for his depression. Well, we all seek happiness, and it is the motivation for practically everything we do, wether it is giving to a telethon or helping the homeless on the street; or perhaps it is other activities not so honorable. Whatever the case, churches and happy hours are full of people looking for happiness.

There is something we absolutely have to get past. Something we have to force ourselves to accept or else we will never find that happiness to fill that void that sits in the pit of our being calling out to be filled. Basically, it’s NOT our universe. Not OUR reality. And that is the answer. That is why it’s actually a great thing to come to the end of your rope. Untill we do, we will be looking about a maze of offerings from the world that all lead to other answers and other answers and other answers. We were meant for God. We were created for God. And not just God, but Jesus Christ. I know for many, you can take the idea of God, but you scoff at the notion of Jesus, and that in itself, is proof of your separation form him. For if it didn’t bother you, then you could take his name and position just as easily as God. But God, for many, can be whatever they want. You can’t do that with Jesus, and this is some proof people, for God says you are separated from him, and he and Jesus are one.

3,000 years ago King Solomon wrote that he had tried everything. He was surrounded by wealth, treasure, pleasure, accomplishment, relationships, loved by man and had over a thousand wives and concubines, all the trappings of fame, and yet he did not find satisfaction. He was a winner to a far greater degree than any of us have time, talent and money to succeed and he said it was like trying to catch the wind. Just ask Michael Jackson. Just ask Rodney Dangerfield, a man who made many laugh over forty or so years with his self deprecating humor. He owned a house in California and a club in New York. He could treat the whole country as his home, he could fly anywhere and knew scores and scores of people, as could Michael Jackson. But Rodney was quoted as saying before he died, that he never really was happy. I think you know good and well Michael Jackson’s position.


Some say poverty is the reason for crime, yet there are poor people who are never criminals. Also, there are rich people who ARE criminals, and those who are not. It’s not enough to be talented and wealthy, or to just be poor so as not to get into trouble; for there are many troublesome things that can come your way if you DO have money and power. We find ourselves unhappy and we look for a fulfillment, a filling of the void, but we just can’t bring ourselves to bow our knee and let God, Jesus, be the Lord of our lives... for surely you will not be fulfilled. Surely you will not finally find that void filled.

And who told you that? Who told you you were naked?

Let’s Talk About Mental Leverage, Pt. 6

Okay, for those of you following along, this will be part six of the series. Today we talk about how to convert between digits and consonants and back again. The chart below has three columns, 1) The digits, 2) the corresponding sounds, 3) a memory peg to help you associate 1 and 2. Similar sounds are lumped together for brevity and that leaves us with just ten consonants.

Some memory pegs will seem far fetched or silly, but remember the more impossibly wild the association, the stronger the bond.

Digit Corresponding Sound Memory peg

1. t or d, There is one downstroke in a mall t
2. n, There are 2 downstrokes in a small n
3. m, There are three downstrokes in small m
4. r, The digit four ends in r
5. L, Five fingers with the thumb out form L
6. j, ch, sh, soft g, There are six letters in SHucks
7. k, hard c, hard g, By moving two 7’s around you get K
8. f, ph, v, Handwritten f looks like an 8
9. p or b, Hold a nine up to a mirror and you see p
10. soft c, s, z, The final digit is 0 and the final letter is z

Reading over the chart several times a day will re-enforce the connection between the numbers and signs and you will find you no longer need the pegs to remember the chart. Therefore, having done so, you can now practice converting phrases from letters to numbers and back again. It’s the first part that takes the longest. You saw, for example, that the letters, MNTLLVRG could form several phrases; but any phrase made up of those letters can only convert to 32155846. Each consonant can only stand for one digit.

Let’s try another number, 3845912. This gives us the following consonant sounds, MFRLPTN.

This could be: “my for real put on.” Which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense except that for real and put on are opposites and can be remembered quite easily. Now, to prove the system works, take the phrase and look up the numbers in the chart. What number do you come up with?

Digit conversion is often used by those who want to remember a long series of phone numbers, or in this case, serial numbers of products they work with. Wouldn’t it be great to remember all the phone numbers you need without having to look them up?

We’ll talk about this more next time... if anyone is really listening out there....anyone?