Why so many people – including scientists – suddenly believe in an afterlife

Why so many people – including scientists – suddenly believe in an afterlife

 

Maclean’s ^ | May 7, 2013 | Brian Bethune

 

big (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

 

 

Posted on Tuesday, May 07, 2013 2:00:54 PM by rickmichaels

 

Death, it seems, is no longer Shakespeare’s undiscovered country, the one “from whose bourn no traveler returns.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not according to contemporary bestseller lists. Dreams and visions of the afterlife have been constants across human history, and the near-death experiences (now known as NDEs) of those whose lives were saved by medical advances have established, for millions, a credible means by which someone could peek into the next world.

 

gophum (Photo credit: GunnyG1345)

 

 

 

Lately a fair-sized pack of witnesses claim to have actually entered into the afterlife before coming back again to write mega-selling accounts of what they saw and felt there.

 

 

 

Republican ‘Old Guard’ Rips Into Rand Paul…

Republican ‘Old Guard’ Rips Into Rand Paul

 

Flopping Aces ^ | 03-11-13 | Curt

 

Posted on Monday, March 11, 2013 1:40:00 PM by Starman417

 

English: United States Senate candidate , at a town hall meeting in Louisville, . (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

John McCain

 

The old guard….that old guard that gave us McCain and Romney to sacrifice at the altar of Obama, knowing full well they would lose….is at it again pulling out the knives and placing them into the backs of the new guard.

 

 

 

 

 

The guard that has actual idea’s, that actually has courage, that is willing to take on the old crony’s.

 

Here’s Bill Kristol, that champion of the old guard:

 

(“…an “A” in Shakespeare because that person is so removed from common American thought that he would never represent me—or the conservative, constitutional ideals I stand for….”)Jon Christian Ryter — Ivy Leaguers Make Bad Presidents, Part 1

Cover of William Shakespeare

…..So, to me a “D” in Shakespeare is a badge of honor. It means you survived Dread & Duress. I could never, in good conscious every vote for a political candidate who scored an “A” in Shakespeare because that person is so removed from common American thought that he would never represent me—or the conservative, constitutional ideals I stand for.

 

The fact that he, or she, would waste his or her education on such worthless liberal tomfoolery tells me that he or she believe they are, or wants to be, part of an elite group of the most refined Americans who have been bred to believe their destiny is to rule the rest of us.

Too Much Higher Education ~ Walter E. Williams

Too Much Higher Education

Townhall.com ^ | September 14, 2011 | Walter E. Williams

Posted on Wednesday, September 14, 2011 7:43:30 AM by Kaslin

Too much of anything is just as much a misallocation of resources as it is too little, and that applies to higher education just as it applies to everything else. A recent study from The Center for College Affordability and Productivity titled “From Wall Street to Wal-Mart,” by Richard Vedder, Christopher Denhart, Matthew Denhart, Christopher Matgouranis and Jonathan Robe, explains that college education for many is a waste of time and money. More than one-third of currently working college graduates are in jobs that do not require a degree. An essay by Vedder that complements the CCAP study reports that there are “one-third of a million waiters and waitresses with college degrees.” The study says Vedder — distinguished professor of economics at Ohio University, an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and director of CCAP — “was startled a year ago when the person he hired to cut down a tree had a master’s degree in history, the fellow who fixed his furnace was a mathematics graduate, and, more recently, a TSA airport inspector (whose job it was to ensure that we took our shoes off while going through security) was a recent college graduate.”

The nation’s college problem is far deeper than the fact that people simply are overqualified for particular jobs. Citing the research of AEI scholar Charles Murray’s book “Real Education” (2008), Vedder says: “The number going to college exceeds the number capable of mastering higher levels of intellectual inquiry. This leads colleges to alter their mission, watering down the intellectual content of what they do.” In other words, colleges dumb down courses so that the students they admit can pass them. Murray argues that only a modest proportion of our population has the cognitive skills, work discipline, drive, maturity and integrity to master truly higher education. He says that educated people should be able to read and understand classic works, such as John Locke’s “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” or William Shakespeare’s “King Lear.” These works are “insightful in many ways,” he says, but a person of average intelligence “typically lacks both the motivation and ability to do so.” Mastering complex forms of mathematics is challenging but necessary to develop rigorous thinking and is critical in some areas of science and engineering.

Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, authors of “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” (2011), report on their analysis of more than 2,300 undergraduates at 24 institutions. Forty-five percent of these students demonstrated no significant improvement in a range of skills — including critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing — during their first two years of college. According to an August 2006 issue brief by the Alliance for Excellent Education, student “lack of preparation is also apparent in multiple subject areas; of college freshmen taking remedial courses, 35 percent were enrolled in math, 23 percent in writing, and 20 percent in reading.” Declining college admissions standards have contributed to the deterioration of the academic quality of our secondary schools. Colleges show high schools that they do not have to teach much in order for youngsters to be admitted.

According to Education Next, an August Harvard University study titled “Globally Challenged: Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete?” found that only 32 percent of U.S. students achieved proficiency in math, compared with “75 percent of students in Shanghai, 58 percent in Korea, and 56 percent in Finland. Countries in which a majority — or near majority — of students performed at or above the proficiency level in math include Switzerland, Japan, Canada, and the Netherlands.” Results from the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment international test show that U.S. students rank 32nd among industrialized nations in proficiency in math and 17th in reading.

Much of American education is in shambles. Part of a solution is for colleges to refuse to admit students who are unprepared to do real college work. That would help to reveal the shoddy education provided at the primary and secondary school levels. Here I’m whistlin’ “Dixie,” because college administrators are more interested in numbers of students, which equal more money…………….

via Too Much Higher Education.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers -

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1915972/posts

The FReeper Canteen, Oct 25th, 2007 – St. Crispin’s Day
25 OCT 2007 | Old Sarge
Posted on 10/24/2007 9:20:17 PM EDT by Old Sarge

Welcome to the 25 OCT 07 edition of The FReeper Canteen! Today, we shall tour the field of the Battle of Agincourt, fought upon the feast of Saint Crispin!

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers - For he today that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother, be he ne’er so vile This day shall gentle his condition!   And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here, And hold their manhood cheap while any speaks That fought with us upon St. Crispin’s Day!!   (Henry V Act 4, Scene 3, by William Shakespeare) PRELUDE TO THE BATTLE On 24th October 1415 the English army, led by a screen of scouts, marched through the Picardy town of Frévent, now within 30 miles of Calais and safety. As the army entered the valley beyond the town, the scouts came riding back at speed with the news that an immense army blocked the road. The French had managed to march past the English and cut across their route during the delay on the Somme.   A Welsh man-at-arms, David Gambe, on being questioned by King Henry as to the size of the French army, said “There are enough to kill, enough to capture and enough to run away.” That evening an air of resignation hung over the English, caused by the heavy rain that began to fall and the enormous French camp two miles up the road, marked in the dark by myriads of twinkling fires, laughter and music: the French had little doubt but that they would prevail the next day.   During the night Henry made his way around his army giving words of encouragement; a dramatic episode made much of by Shakespeare. THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT The next morning, the feast of St Crispin and a public holiday in England, the English army took up position across the road to Calais in three divisions of knights and men-at-arms; the Archers formed wedged divisions along the front. Further down the road the French army was forming for battle. In front of the English position two forests approached the road from each side, leaving an area of muddy plough between them, insufficient for the French army to deploy with ease when every French knight of significance wished to be in the front with his retinue; the mass of knights and men-at-arms too compacted and unwieldy to maneuver or control.   The English soldiers knelt down before the battle commenced and kissed the ground as a symbol that they might be returning to the earth before the day was over.