People from certain countries have a particularly hard time entering Costa Rica because they need a special visa known as the Restricted Visa. This is obtained through approval by a commission.
According to the Directorate General for Migration and Foreigners, the Restricted Visa Commission is made up of representatives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Labor, and Public Security. They meet once a week to study the applicants.
The visa is needed for citizens of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, North Korea, Cuba, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Burma, Palestine, Syria, Somalia, and Sri Lanka. The reasons for these countries being on the list include economic reasons, security reasons, and the termination of international agreements.
There is a way to bypass the need for approval by this commission. That is to obtain a visa from the U.S. or Canada that would be accepted by Costa Rican authorities. These include the multiple visa from Canada and the tourist, crew, or business visa from the U.S. It does not apply with transit visas.
Tony Roma’s has had to lay off about 45 employees due to its closing. The Ministry of Labor confirmed that 12 conciliation requests were submitted by its workers on February 17.
This can be done when the employer and employee do not agree on terms of liquidation. The issues can include not being paid, deadlines not being met, and a disagreement in regards to the amount paid or social guarantees provided.
Countless other workers have approached the Ministry with questions related to the layoff and conciliation process. They are entitled to legal advice regarding the aspects of the closure and layoff that relate to them directly.
The restaurant was opened in 2000 in Escazu by a franchise operated in Central America with Salvadoran and Honduran partners. It specialized in ribs. The restaurant has been closed since last week and is already being remodeled.
A few years ago I visited Massachusetts during the fall season on a vacation. I wanted to take in all the spooky ghost stories and haunted attractions.
I visited the temple of Satan in Boston and bought a white pillar candle with a black inked picture of a baby Satan with horns and wings in a cradle. It was handmade by Burke & Hare Co.
I held onto it for some time before I decided to burn it.
I am my own religion and spirituality basically, so defined as Pagan, but I am unlike all other Pagans. I am not a witch, nor do I practice witch craft regularly.
I believe in all the Gods and that they are in fact angels, messengers and protectors of the holy worlds.
Now, I simply wanted to see what happened and had no set intentions except purity and love.
I do believe that all light has shadows here on Earth and so that is the nature of the candle as well.
When I lit it, I did so to pray and ask for protection and also gratitude for all I have.
The angels I called to were Lucifer, Gabriel, Michael, Love goddesses, Odin and Greek gods like Hermes.
I did address my shadow side as well and worked on opening my mind to the ability of the spirit world in all forms and beliefs.
Every time it was lit up, I had a sense of euphoria rush over me, which I do not usually have at all with many candles, so I could definitely tell it was sacred and holy.
Also, I would lit it during my psychic shows and tarot readings and I felt another presence with me in the room.
My past lives memories with the energy of Satan were returned and the shadow side to many others revealed.
It did seem more like a spirit of a man to me than any God or devil.
I could see him in black leather boots, a long black trench coat and a black baseball hat on top of medium black hair. He had a strong energy like he was tall and big as well.
I mostly saw glimpses of him.
Also, whenever the candle was lit I would hear the mention of Boston, nearby Salem, where the temple is all day and night. Everyone that I passed seem to be mentioning Boston. The conversations, people on t.v., social media and radio. I mean anywhere and everywhere you can imagine, I was hearing this. (I live in Sacramento, CA)
It is somewhat creepy that the candle could alter other people’s thoughts like that and I wonder what someone with dark power can actually do to control and manipulate if in my mind, I also noticed this.
I wondered if I was just being paranoid so I told people and they seemed to notice it too, so that it just wasn’t apart of my imagination I know.
I really wanted to make sure it was pure, so I remained celibate and peaceful. I am aware of my powers as well, so I made sure to keep everything that I prayed about a general idea and not focused on a specific person or thing that could change my destiny or theres maybe for the worse.
I had stopped having dreams and so I lit it in the bedroom and soon after my lucid dreams have returned and they are very intense and I have them every night now.
I was getting so addicted to the candle because it was giving me a high that I literally had a panic attack about the fact it would burn out eventually.
I never blew out the flame because I believe that is bad luck unless it’s a birthday flame.
I could feel spirits touching me physically when I would light it before the psychic medium readings and I did think about the candle a lot, like an obsession!
The last part of the candle was lit over a month ago from when I write this and I still am having my lucid dreams, but I don’t feel the presence of that one particular spirit anymore. Nothing unlucky happened, I was never attacked or anything horrible you think would come.
I make sure to bless and protect and honour all life in love and luck, summoning all angels around for me to learn, study and grow from all the magick around me…
I know I am protected forever by the angels of the candle and therefore I do believe if you light one with honour and grace, you will be blessed and enlightened as well!
Philosophers tend not to argue about their views, either in the quarrelsome or the lawyerly sense of the word. We strive, and usually succeed, at giving each other “a fair and sympathetic hearing” before trying to take apart the other’s claims.
Such an approach has not been anymore generative of clarity than argumentativeness or legal battling however. In the Western tradition it has produced the arcane, hidebound philosophical systems that are the mainstay of academic philosophy.
There is another approach, which involves holding a space, deep listening, and sharing and following a question with questions as they unspool into mutual insight. Given the individualistic assumptions of American/global culture however, questioning together is extremely difficult to initiate, much less sustain.
That being said, I’m engaged in a good old-fashioned philosophical dispute with the Danish philosopher Lena Rachel Anderson, over her claim that “nationalism does not need to be a bad thing.” To my mind, that is simply false.
In her book with Tomas Bjorkman, Lene Rachel defines “ten circles of belonging, through which people must be able to feel a sense of belonging and responsibility.” Its central premise is, as she wrote to me, “that belonging grows from smaller to larger.”
“We love our family before we love our neighborhood, and our country is generally the biggest legal entity where we can speak our mother tongue and engage in political debate.”
“Without this type of belonging and nationalism,” Anderson writes, “we cannot function as a nation-state.”
Both premises appear commonsense, but are simply untrue. Humankind has entered a new phase of history. As the coronavirus pandemic/panic illustrates, everyone lives in a global society and economy now. It is not only possible, it is essential to begin with a feeling for the whole of humanity before the part, as my people and my country.
Therefore it is unfitting to make the crisis of human consciousness more complex than it already is by fabricating a distinction between nationalism and “chauvinistic nationalism,” as Anderson and Bjorkman do. Philosophically and practically, that is a distinction without a difference.
Besides, the identification with our family, folk and nation has become dysfunctional, increasingly preventing the harmonious functioning of nation-states.
As we can attest in America, when a people are no longer intact and minimally cohesive as a people, it is worse than futile to speak of belonging in terms of nationalism, for it feeds into the right-wing extremism that is sweeping the world.
It’s galling to label these truths as “either-or thinking,” as opposed to “both-and thinking.” Both-and thinking amounts to trying to have things both ways.
Identification with particular groups, which is the wellspring of nationalism flowing from the ancient pattern of tribalism, lies at the root of the human dilemma in the present age.
For tens of thousands of years, identifying with particular groups was not just a matter of belonging; it was a matter of survival. Identifying with particular groups is no longer necessary for individual survival however, and it has become divisive, dysfunctional and destructive in the human present, much less the human prospect.
It simply runs counter to reality to say, “As we expand our circles of belonging, the nation is an important and manageable first step beyond our concrete in-groups.” Anderson and Bjorkman thus make a Procrustean bed of nationalism, cutting it to fit a supposedly nuanced redefinition.
On one hand, she and Bjorkman say, “nationalism is a cultural process that is the fundament of thriving nation-state democracy. On the other hand, they acknowledge, “Nationalism is how we identify with our nation-state.”
“Many people are not ready to identify with all of humanity and the planet,” they mistakenly say. Identification is taken as given, when in fact it is precisely the problem. Identification with particular groups, however small or large, is the source of division and fragmentation.
Human beings do not “identify with all of humanity;” human beings emotionally perceive that each one of us is humanity in microcosm.
All over the world, “the circles of belonging” are breaking down. Whatever necessity and validity it had in the past, we simply can no longer go from the smaller to the larger. “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on.”
So what can we do? As individuals in the best sense of the world (not divided human beings) we go from the whole to the part, from humanity within ourselves to our families, our towns and cities, and our nations.
As things are, from America to China, from Europe to Russia, from Latin America to India, nationalism is once again rearing its ugly head. Twice in the last century it produced world wars in which tens of millions were killed. Why haven’t we learned?
Despite Trump and his ilk’s atavistic nationalism, or the nostalgic nationalism extending from family and folk, enough people can begin with the fact of humanity in our irreversibly global society to end the tribalism/nationalism that’s tearing the earth and humanity apart.
The Congress has approved a law meant to speed up the adoption process by coordinating actions between the National Children’s Trust and the Judiciary.
This comes after a paradigm shift towards the best interest of the kids and adolescents. The socio-legal situation of a minor under the care of PANI currently takes way too long to be resolved.
When looking at what’s best for the minors, we see a clear need to reduce the waiting time by quickly processing the declaration of abandonment when it is warranted. Many kids and adolescents have been in an unofficial state of abandonment for many years by the time a judge gives the declaration of abandonment which allows them to then be adopted.
It can take years to find the best family for each child, especially those with siblings or with special needs, but it shouldn’t take years to be able to start the process, which is dependent on the declaration of abandonment. Once PANI decides it is not possible for a child to return to their biological family, a family judge should be able to legalize this decision quickly.
Over the last few years, there have been between 118 and 154 minors per year placed in adoption while many more wait in orphanages for their legal situations to be resolved. One of the goals of the new law is to raise the number of children and adolescentes put in adoption.
Thousands of cyclists gather annually to commemorate the death of four bikers in front of Walmart in Curridabat. This year they were joined by cyclists in Cartago, Guanacaste, and Limón.
Those in Curridabat had a moment of silence for the victims and then laid down on the road. This is so we will never forget the four lives lost there.
Those in Cartago made a large “1.5m” with their bodies, to remind drivers of the 1.5 meters of space needed between bikes and cars for safety.
Cyclists don’t ask for much, just respect and 1.5 meters of distance, the difference between life and death.
The cyclists’ show of support for the victims was impressive. They ask drivers to remember that cyclists are human beings and need to have safety on the roads.
I’m first a contemplative, which means a focus on the heart and spirit; second a philosopher, which means a focus on the head and reason. As long as I keep that order clear, I feel I’m basically on the right track.
When I was young man, philosophers were confined to the remotest corners of the ivory tower. In the last 20 years, philosophy has been mainstreamed, although only academic philosophers (an oxymoron) gain “a fair and sympathetic hearing.”
As a contemplative and philosopher, I would be very wary about listening to so-called professional philosophers regarding questions regarding death and the afterlife.
That’s especially true when academic philosophers stand on their authority as philosophers, which is a very shaky foundation in this society.
Here in California, John Martin Fischer, a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, is on shaky ground indeed in a piece entitled: “Are ‘Near Death Experiences’ Real?” He writes: “Many of the most visible proponents of the idea that N.D.E.s prove the existence of an afterlife are doctors. It is important to emphasize that their conclusions are not medical but philosophical.”
“The ideas that the mind can separate from the body and have contact with a heavenly realm are clearly not medical conclusions, and physicians have no special authority here. After all, they are physicians, not metaphysicians.”
First of all, I don’t know of a single academic philosopher that knows what the hell he or she talking about when they refer to metaphysics. As most academic philosophers will admit after a couple beers, they are as confused as the average Joe about these issues (and I don’t mean Joe Biden, who has grappled with untimely death more than most people).
Rather than heed Wittgenstein’s admonition, “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent,” they rush in, saying silly things like, “In N.D.E.’s we get right to the gates, but we don’t go through; we get right to the edge of the universe, but we stop there.”
Fischer conflates doctors who feel they’ve witnessed “evidence of an afterlife” with “the mind separating from the body” as well as “contact with a heavenly realm.” That’s disingenuous. In fact, for a philosopher it’s intellectually dishonest.
After all, no one better knows how to set up straw men than philosophers, since they invented the practice, and the term.
Let’s be clear—evidence of an afterlife, the mind separating from the body, and contact with a heavenly realm are three different and distinct things.
I don’t have an opinion or belief about near death experiences, mainly because I feel that whatever their validity, they are wholly secondary to questions with respect to death.
Equating spiritual experiences, N.D.E.’s and “supernaturalized interpretation,” and then equating all three with “people throughout the world who have absolutely certain belief in their religions,” is devious.
Many people who have experienced N.D.E,’s don’t have “supernaturalistic interpretations.” They simply say that something happened they don’t understand, an event that changes their entire worldview, opening them to questions and possibilities that they had either dismissed, or never considered before the N.D.E.
Again however, N.D.E.’s, whatever their validity and meaning, are secondary. An equivalent example is clairvoyance, which may exist, but serious people don’t concern themselves with it.
Then what should serious people concern themselves with? Regularly experiencing states of being in which the thought-made division between life and death is obliterated, I for one want to understand whether death can be a fully integrated part of life.
I don’t mean the death of the body, and the end of life, but death as an integral part of life, perhaps even the very ground of life.
Are the cycles of birth and death in nature a recapitulation of the birth and death of universes? If so, is there a ground beyond the cycles, from which all cycles originate? Is that ground creation itself, and is it being repeated in microcosm every moment in the universe, and potentially, within us?
To quote Wittgenstein again, “I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.”
Leave the near death experiences to the end of life. Grapple with the really fascinating and urgent questions, which offer the true possibility of transcendence and liberation.
Question such as: Can we psychologically die while fully alive?
The Probity, Transparency and Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office raided the Juan Santamaría Night School as well as the MEP Regional Directorate in Cañas for evidence related to a case against the director of the night college.
A student complaint led authorities to look into the case. The director is suspected of charging ₡30,000 to eleventh year students in order to have him change their grades so that they could pass the year.
The director summoned a student to the school on a Saturday to finalize the agreement. Judicial agents arrested the official after the meeting but he was released shortly after. He may face two to eight years in prison for abusing his public position for capital benefit.
The man has been suspended with pay since November pending the result of the investigation. The Public Prosecutor’s Office has not ordered the man’s arrest or any precautionary measures.
Okay, ghost hunting aficionados, let’s jump into the HPI time machine and go back to the year 2009. On October 3, 2009, Saturday, I went hunting for the ghost of the San Francisco Zodiac. I kid you not, read on….
October 3, 2009, Saturday: A couple of days ago, HPI Paranormal Investigator Chantal Apodoca tells me that she has a connection in Napa. The connection is Julianna Fox, former resident of Napa. Julianna would be visiting Napa this weekend, because of the Cajun Festival that is going on. As we arrived and parked at Coombs and Fifth Street, Julianna pulls up in a hot red Tacoma convertible with California Love by 2Pac playing loudly.
Julianna thanked Chantal and I for doing this preliminary scouting mission. Julianna feels she may be a sensitive and thinks she may have seen the ghost of the San Francisco Zodiac at Lake Berryessa in Napa County.
A Little History of the Zodiac at Lake Berryessa.
Students Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepherd set up a picnic along the shoreline of Lake Berryessa. Bryan and Cecilia were lying on the ground in a romantic embrace, when Cecelia noticed a strange man lingering by some trees. The next time she looked he was closer and now wearing a bizarre executioner’s hood. He had a white crossed circle stitched in front of his black outfit. When the Zodiac confronted the students, he held them at gunpoint. He promised them all he wanted was their money and he would leave. Bryan and Cecilia were bound with clothes line. When they finally thought that their assailant was about to leave, they were attacked with a foot long knife. Bryan survived the attack and Cecilia died from her wounds. The Zodiac etched a message on their vehicle proving that he was responsible for the murder. The date of this savage attack was on September 27, 1969.
I must say that the Zodiac terrorized the bay area and to this day, no one can forget this serial killer. As I talk about the Zodiac, I notice that Julianna is shaking, she does not want her picture taken for this article, but she wants to take us to the location where she saw a black hooded ghostly figure walking the shore of Lake Berryessa and she wants to show us tonight! Note: Julianna is the friend of one of Chantal’s cousins.
To calm down Julianna we surveyed the Cajun Festival and talked with people like Rachelle Abisia who is the friend of the owner of Uncle Willies Restaurant, where they serve great BBQs, Cajun flavored catfish. This restaurant is in Oakland and by promising we will visit this restaurant, she allowed us to talk with her boyfriend Jason Smith who may have had an Old Hag Syndrome experience. Here is Jason’s story. Jason felt an entity enter his body and saw 3 entities fly around his head. His head board slammed against the wall and the blinds in his bedroom started shaking. This happened in Vista, California. When he moved to Vallejo, California the entities followed him. His body felt possessed and his heart felt like it was about to explode. There were times he had difficult time breathing. Could Jason have experienced the Old Hag Syndrome? Who knows? What is good is that he hasn’t had anymore paranormal experiences for a while. He has never experienced anything in Napa.
By this time, I worked up an appetite and Chantal, Julianna and I dined at the Small World Cafe and Restaurant on beef gyros, chased down by Cokes. Great food and it’s located at: 928 Coombs Street. We talked with some of the customers and one customer named Daniel tells us that there is a private home in Napa in which a family of three live. A mother, father and 3 year old son. One day, the sister of the mother stayed at the home with her husband. The sister’s husband was working on the roof of the house and he was pushed and fell off the roof. The next day there was writing on the shower wall that read: “Evil 2”. The house is reputed to be very haunted.
Daniel also says that at the Blue Plate Diner he saw a strange man that almost had backward feet, walking crooked and whispering to himself. As he watched this strange man, he was astonished to see the man disappear behind an electrical box. Daniel went to investigate and the man completely disappeared. What is even odder is that the day and time he saw this man, 2 women in 2 different homes in Napa witnessed a dark fog that entered their homes.
After talking with Daniel, I am beginning to believe that Napa is very haunted. People at the festival say that the Yountville graveyard is very haunted and sometimes people have seen flying orbs around the tombstones. One lady who refused to be identified claims to have seen a flying man’s head hover over the tombstones. Mitch A. Pilling tells us that in 1973 he was at the cemetery and heard the Allman Brothers playing from his vehicle. He thought this was strange, because the 8 Track was ready to play, but the car engine was not on and there was no reason that the 8-Track should be playing.
A lady named Leslie Hodges tells us that 32 years ago, she had a home birth and the child that was born upon her, died within 5 days. Two weeks later, a huge gust of wind swept through the house. She believes that wind was her child. The child was named Halona. In American Indian that means ‘happy fortune’. Leslie believes Halona is her guiding angel now.
Sally Baldwin ran up to us and had no paranormal stories, but wanted to explain how much she was enjoying the festival! With the Cajun music playing, the atmosphere was truly festive. The Cajun bands deliver a unique Louisiana sound that can’t be matched anywhere in the world.
As we continue our preliminary scouting mission, we learn that on 813 Main Street a woman was murdered. Her ghost still haunts this building location. We visit the Napa River Inn that was built in 1884. Mr. Hatt was the owner of this old hotel and his son who died unexpectantly haunts one of the rooms of this hotel.
It was now time for Julianna to take us to the location where she saw the Zodiac’s ghost. The sun was down and there was a full moon in the night sky. Chantal and I conducted EVP work and took many photographs without any results. During our investigation Julianna tumbles and collapses. As I pick up Julianna, I asked her if she was okay and what caused her to fall like that. Julianna claims that something briskly passed through her. She felt some kind of paranormal force entered her body quickly and exited. If this is so, could it be that Julianna is truly a sensitive and picks up the other side, while non-sensitives like Chantal and I, feel nothing out-of-the-ordinary. Also, if there as an entity that passed through her body, could it have been the Zodiac? When we drop Julianna off at her car, she said that when she passed out, she saw the image of a large knife.
Final Note: Of all the people that we interviewed today, two people claim they have seen dark mists along the shores of Lake Berryessa. Has the Zodiac returned in ghostly form? Well, I would love to know. So readers, if you ever plan to do some camping at Lake Berryessa, please let me know if you run into the Zodiac. I would love to give him a one-way ticket to the depths of Hades. Note: Shannon ‘Ms. Macabre’ McCabe conference calls Chantal and I, while in Napa and wanted a full briefing. Our briefing ended with my words: “No Shannon, we did not find the ghost of the Zodiac.”
By Paul Dale Roberts aka The Demon Warrior
Halo Paranormal Investigations www.cryptic916.com/
Some people are now eligible to get a new visa to the U.S. without having to go to the embassy in Pavas. This applies to people who were already granted a tourist visa and it is about to expire or has expired in the past 12 months.
The process is just like the first time you applied, starting with filling out the DS-160 form. You likely will not be asked in for another interview if your first visa was given in Costa Rica, for ten years, was a B1 or B2 tourist visa, and you have never violated U.S. immigration law.
If you have lived illegally in the U.S., this interview exception will not apply. In certain cases, even those who meet the requirements may be asked to interview again at the discretion of the authorities in charge.
If your last visa was canceled or revoked or was limited to a single entry, or if you changed your name, or if you did not provide fingerprints last time then you will have to go in for another interview. Anyone wishing to switch to a different type of visa, such as a student one, will also have to interview.
A man was arrested as the suspect of sending child pornography to Canada. The Center for the Coordination of Child Exploitation in Canada investigated the case after receiving confidential information.
It was found that the material disseminated was uploaded from Costa Rica. Authorities from Canada alerted Costa Rica. The OIJ and local authorities tracked the suspect down by his IP address.
He was arrested on Thursday morning while leaving his home in Naranjo and faces four to eight years in prison, according to the Criminal Code. The authorities seized laptops, USB storage devices, and cell phones.
The detainee was brought to the Public Prosecutor where his legal status will be determined.
Just one week ago, the OIJ arrested a couple who abused a girl one year and eight months old and recorded the sexual acts. In the raid, a cell phone was confiscated and the videos were found on it.
The Costa Rican Institute of Electricity (ICE) plans to sell or rent all of its idle properties and equipment. There are 3,000 properties it can sell. It intends to make 10% of the total value of each asset.
Other efficiency measures being considered include closing thermal plants and reducing payroll. All of these changes are aimed at earning more liquidity and improving the management of the public company.
Hazel Cepeda Hogdon took office as general manager in August and is behind the endeavors. She points out that renting out strategic locations could monetize them. Non-strategic properties will be sold. Obsolete equipment that generates more cost than benefits will also be gotten rid of.
Cepeda promised transparency as well as that “2020 is going to be the year of efficiency in the Institute.” She expects to close the year with about ₡3,000 million in savings.
The word ‘evolution’ is overused and misused, coming to mean everything from gradual societal improvement to technological innovation. Strictly speaking however, evolution has nothing to do with human affairs. Indeed, I submit that evolution has been stuck since “fully modern humans” emerged.
My worldview is that human history, which began with the invention of writing, has not been a slowly ascending spiral of progress but a now rapidly descending spiral of fragmentation, culminating in the ecological crisis and crisis of consciousness everyone on earth is facing today.
Of course, there have been astounding scientific and technological advancements, as well as notable advancements in civilization, such as the elimination (at least legally) of slavery and women’s suffrage, as well as the reduction of poverty and the increase in education worldwide.
The core truth is however, as I heard a religious teacher say near the end of his life, “No teacher, however illumined, has changed the basic course of humankind.”
When I first heard that statement, it both grabbed me and made me question. Didn’t Jesus, for one, change the course of humanity?
I’d already come to feel the reason so many people in the West, and even the Middle East, have a strong feeling for Jesus in the 2000-plus years since he was crucified, is that though his mission failed, he saw it through, and didn’t lose faith in God and humanity.
The Buddha is a more difficult case, because he did ignite an inner revolution that deeply altered the course of an entire region, from its origins in India spreading to China, Tibet, Japan and beyond. In recent decades, the importation and transplantation of Buddhism to the West to the dead rootstock of the West has coincided with its decline in the East.
Apart from these and other examples, including Mohammed, the core question, which I asked for weeks after hearing the above statement, is: What is the basic course of humankind, and can it change?
Is human consciousness evolving, in the sense that that the human heart, in general, is growing more expansive and the human mind more capacious?
Or is the reverse happening—the human heart is shrinking, and humans today are shadows of the richness and character of our forbears, as violent and barbaric as they could be and often were?
More telling is humankind’s relationship with nature, and the mystery within and beyond nature. It mirrors the increasing lack of relationship we have with each other.
Looked at from a whole perspective, it’s impossible to argue that we have been progressing as a species, rather than becoming increasingly destructive to the earth, on which we arose along with all other animals. Through the juggernaut of global capitalism, the dominant view is to see earth as resource to deplete before humans colonize Mars.
As man continues to rapaciously plunder the planet, the human heart is shrinking, and more and more people are becoming, in the vernacular, shitheads. Many, perhaps most young people have given up on humanity, and the vast majority of people seek escape in myriad ways. Taking care of ‘me,’ in one form or another, has become the highest value, not just in the West, but increasingly around the world.
Despite the growing reality of darkness and the escalation of evil, and the reactions of despair and depression, something else may be happening however. I say ‘may’ not to hold out hope, but to consider and suggest another possibility.
Humankind is facing, in the cliché of our time, “an existential crisis.” The idea of an ascending spiral of human civilization and consciousness is simply false. The descending spiral of consciousness and civilization is accurate. Is there another future for humanity?
The human brain has not only the capacity for accumulating tremendous knowledge through science, and translating it into astounding technologies (the ultimate being the replication of the functions of thought itself through AI).
The human brain also has the capacity to be completely, attentively still, and commune with the silence, mystery and sacredness that pervade nature and the cosmos.
To this point, we humans have been externalizing creatures. For many tens of thousands of years the imperative of survival in the hardships of the wilderness drove an outward orientation.
However, now that man has tamed or ‘conquered’ nearly all the wilderness that the entire earth once was, and we have entered the so-called Anthropocene Age, the accumulation of knowledge is leaving less and less inner ace for the highest capacity of Homo sapiens—that of awakening transcendent consciousness. Doing so has become a matter of individual and collective survival.
At some point, and this is that point in our age at least, a great leap becomes as simple as turning around and taking the first step.
Unlike just before the cognitive revolution about 100,000 years ago in East Africa, humankind doesn’t face a physical bottleneck but a psychological, emotional and spiritual bottleneck, for which there has to be conscious rather than subconscious breakthrough.
Like the cognitive breakthrough however, which ushered in “fully modern humans,” it will only take only a few thousand people at the right time to open the way ahead, away from the inwardly dead humans we have become to the inwardly alive and growing human beings we can be.
Properties with a value under ₡20.2 million are now exempt from paying real estate tax. In the case that your home is worth more and it is your only property, 0.25% on the excess is what is collected as tax.
The tax exemption applies if it is the only property owned. The exempt value varies from year to year and is calculated by multiplying the base salary established by the Supreme Court of Justice by 45. This salary in January 2020 was 450,200.
Some municipalities offer incentives to those who do have to pay tax for prepaying it. This can save 5.65%. This helps the municipalities with the problems faced from lack of timely payments.
The taxes go, in part, to administrative expenses of the local government, the Technical Standardization Body of the General Directorate of Taxation of the Ministry of Finance and the Administrative Board of the National Registry.
A Costa Rican is still stranded in China, in a city quarantined due to the coronavirus. She was told her country will come to her rescue over a month ago but the plane never arrived.
She has been in Wuhan, China studying for a master’s degree in Urban Planning. Just a few months before graduation, the coronavirus outbreak happened. Since then, she has been quarantined to her residence at the school.
Each person is allowed to go out once every ten days for supplies. Then they share amongst them so everyone has what they need. She has stayed free of the virus thus far.
Still, some Ticos worry that she may carry the virus and bring it back to Costa Rica without knowing. This has led to an explosion of derogatory comments on social media. The girl’s mother forbade her from looking at social media for this reason.
Her mother believes that the Government of Costa Rica has done everything it could but has not been able to bring her daughter home. She hopes nobody is ever in this situation. She is thankful for a friend who is a psychologist and is helping her through the tough time.
Below is a story from the dusty HPI archives. It’s a story about the phenomena known as the Black-Eyed Boys. Are the Black-Eyed Boys demons or are they extraterrestrial? Read on and let me know what you think.
Before I get into this story, I recently saw the movie Kick-Ass and The Losers. In the movie theater, is where I met up with Jihanna Aiello. Jihanna recognized me from Nancy Bradley – Celebrity Psychic’s TV Show. Jihanna and I had a great conversation about Kick-Ass and The Losers and I explained to her that both are comic book movies. Most movie goers watch movies and never realize that some movies originate from a comic book. Kick-Ass was created by Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. I had the honor of meeting Mark Millar and John Romita Jr. at the 1997 San Diego International Comic Book Convention. The Losers comic book was published by Vertigo/DC Comics.
As I finished my movie review of both of these movies with Jihanna, Jihanna explained to me about her own paranormal experience. Her story is compelling.
Jihanna tells me that last year in her home in downtown Sacramento, she encountered the paranormal phenomenon the Black-Eyed Boys. She remembers that in June 2009, she saw a tall skinny kid with a baseball cap on, dirty white t-shirt, blue jeans and tennis shoes standing with a short stocky boy wearing a flannel red shirt, blue jeans and tennis shoes standing out on her driveway. They kept looking towards her kitchen window and she thought it was quite odd, because their faces seemed to be blurry. No matter how hard she tried, she could not recognize their faces. Every part of their bodies were crystal clear, but when she looked at their faces, their faces were completely indistinguishable.
The boys stood on her driveway for up to two hours and still looking towards the kitchen window. Finally she had enough and went outside to confront the boys. When she confronted the boys, she noticed that they had no white in their eyes. Their eyes were completely black. Cold chills ran down the back of her spine. Somehow she mustered up enough courage to ask them why they were standing in her driveway. The boys simply said…”we are sorry, we are just hungry, can we come in for a bite to eat?” She told them no. They kept asking if they could come in, Jihanna ran back to the house and locked the door, she was terrified.
Jihanna says in her own words:
“For a period of three days straight, they kept showing up on my driveway. Enough was enough and I called the police. When the police came they were no where in sight. After that, they never showed up on my driveway, but every once in a while, I will see them in the downtown area, like they are following me. They will be behind a tree, I will drive to another section of Sacramento and I would see them again or I will see them on the side of the road as I am driving by and they will stare at me. What is amazing is that they can be in two different locations miles apart as quickly as I can drive from one point of town to another point of town.
They always wear the same clothes. This year, I haven’t been pestered by these black-eyed boys and I hope they will never come back again.
Here is a story about the Black-eyed Boys that is similar to Jihanna’s story, in the words of the victim:
“I am a 47-year-old woman. The day in question was a normal day for me. I am an apartment manager of over 20 years experience and open my door to strangers every day. Sometimes I don’t like the looks of the people that come to my door to see available apartments, but I will still make myself available to show the ready and empty apartments to rent.
On this day, however, I was not willing to even step out of my office door, because a creepy young boy knocked at my door. He had come in the early afternoon. I opened the door to see who it was. He was a young boy of about 17 or 18, approximately. He asked me about an open apartment for rent. I remember feeling very scared and shaken by his appearance. He did not look weird by his dress or such. It was his eyes. I remember feeling the hair on my neck stand up, and I was shaking just from looking in his eyes.
I have never felt like this before in all the years I have done this job. I could not look him straight in the eyes. I felt like I was about to die. My instincts told me this. I noticed he was on a bicycle, not in a vehicle. He was not moving toward me or anything, but he was just waiting for me to invite him in or take him to the empty unit. Now, some people may think that I was just over-reacting or something, but the eyes were completely black – like there was no real pupil. He spoke normally to me, but I had to just shut the door in his face and get as far from him as I could. I felt like I was in extreme danger. Only because of the eyes. I think if I had looked any longer into them, I would have not been able to shut that door.
I shook for hours after that. I called my daughter at work and told her about it. She told me about the “black-eyed kids.” I am still afraid of that image, looking in his eyes. The black-eyed kids are some young kids that try and get people to invite them into their cars or homes,etc. – and the people end up dead.
There were two incidents that occurred in Portland, Oregon here that I heard about. I just tried to look up anything I could about them, but there isn’t a lot of info on them. Just be warned, do not allow any kids with dark eyes inside your home or vehicles, no matter how young or persistent they are.”
For more information about the Black-Eyed Boys, read Brad Steiger’s book: Real Vampires, Night Stalkers, and Creatures from the Darkside.
The Ministry of Health has banned the use of slides in hot springs. Warning signs must be placed and preparations to remove the slides put in motion. This is because of the risk of contracting amoeba that causes meningitis.
The amoeba Naegleria fowleri is a parasite that enters the nose when people put their head under water or the water is splashed at their face. It causes meningitis that is capable of killing 9 out of ten who develop it. Immediate health care is essential. Basic treatment can prevent the amoeba from destroying the brain if treated early.
Two minors contracted the amoeba in the last two months. A 15-year-old contracted it in hot springs in Bagaces, Guanacaste, at the end of December and died in early January. A four-year-old girl contracted it in a hot spring in San Carlos, on February 8, and was treated two days later in a hospital in Cartago. She overcame the illness, something considered exceptional.
Those who want to use hot springs to relax should do so with their head above water and kids should not be allowed to splash. In warm water rivers and lakes, the same precautions should be taken. In addition, you should not move the sediment around in shallow water. Keeping the nose closed is a good idea.
The judges from the Criminal Court of Pavas unanimously convicted Bismark Espinoza Martínez to 16 years in prison for the homicide of Carla Stefaniak. They decided he was the only one who knew the grounds well enough to know where to hide a body.
That seems like something hard to prove. The man’s lawyer will study the case and file the appropriate appeals. The man insists he is innocent and is said to be calm and patiently waiting for the truth to be seen. In remarks made at the hearing, they pointed out the fact that the man had no scratches on his body, nothing to indicate any type of struggle, and no apparent motive.
He was convicted of simple homicide rather than qualified homicide because it was not possible to determine how the events occurred nor find a motive for why he would kill her.
The villa where she stayed seems to have been cleaned by someone other than the cleaning staff as it was a bit out of order. Espinoza told the police the woman left in a vehicle that arrived to pick her up but it was later discovered she never left the premises.
The father of the murdered woman has an unimaginable pain. While the hotel and Espinoza must pay ₡30 million for pain and suffering, no amount of money could replace his daughter.
Given how I became one, I don’t talk much about being a vegetarian. Each person has to come to it in his or her own way. My way, which I wouldn’t recommend, was life threatening.
There are three ways to become a vegetarian—from the head, from the heart, and from the gut. The first often doesn’t stick, and the third involves serious illness.
As humans drive more and more animals to extinction, vegetarianism represents living sustainably on the Earth. Besides, eating tenderloin rather than grains leaves a huge carbon footprint.
Becoming a vegetarian for these reasons doesn’t quite doesn’t cut it however. And it leaves one open to the charge of the “casualness with which many people make this decision.”
In an embarrassingly superficial piece in America’s newspaper of record, a senior editor wrote, with an apparently straight face: “To stop eating meat has a way of alienating us from our histories and our traditions and the people around us.”
As if most people, the West at least, aren’t alienated from “our traditions, our histories and the people around us.” The well adjusted are the kind of people who were right at home during Trump’s flyover and campaign rally lap in “The Beast” at a recent NASCAR race.
Serious people don’t cling to traditions that are no longer coherent, much less cohesive. Serious people aren’t comfortable in their illusions of “God, Family, Country,” as the godless philanderer and national disgrace shouted before his roaring mob.
The best reason I ever heard for becoming a vegetarian was a one word answer given by a religious teacher when he was asked why he didn’t eat meat. “Pity,” he replied.
For me the path to not eating animals was life altering, precisely what the reactionary editor advises avoiding in her preposterous piece, “I Admire Vegetarians. It’s a Choice I Won’t Ever Make.”
Though she was raised in America, she absurdly, contradictorily says, “The pull of family and traditional forces in Malaysia has become stronger for me even as combating climate change becomes ever more urgent.”
Having impaled herself on the horns of the human dilemma, I still wouldn’t wish on her what made me a vegetarian. Not eating animals is secondary.
Each of us is microcosm of humankind, and we have to radically change. Few people want to change however, even if they intellectually perceive the necessity.
There is no choice. Or rather, there is a choice, but there is no choosing. As Socrates pointed out a long time ago, when you really see the right thing, you act. The entire American psychological structure based on choosing flows from immense confusion.
To a vegetarian the story of the Uruguayan Rugby team that crashed in the Andes in 1972, with survivors having to eat family and teammates to survive is instructive. Having not tasted fowl or fish, cow or pig for nearly 30 years, I would feel similar qualms about eating animal flesh to survive, though I would do so.
Three decades ago, walking in hills above South San Francisco Bay after an intense meditation in which the ‘’me’ dissolved and thought was completely still, birds and squirrels didn’t flee as I passed by on a narrow, thickly vegetated path. When I stopped, they gathered around me. It moved me so much that I immediately asked myself, ‘should I be a vegetarian?’
Health food for fitness concept with fresh fruit, vegetables, pulses, herbs, spices, nuts, grains and pulses. High in anthocyanins, antioxidants,smart carbohydrates, omega 3 fatty acids, minerals and vitamins.
The next day, after eating a favorite chicken taco takeout meal, I got really sick, but because the woman I was with didn’t, I assumed it was the flu. Three days and much vomiting later, I began bleeding rectally.
A sharp physician’s assistant at urgent care said that he thought I had a rare form of bacteria found in inadequately cooked chicken, and that I was so dehydrated I should be in the hospital on IV. I resisted, and he made me promise to check myself in the next morning if the horse pill antibiotic didn’t turn the tide.
The doctor came in, confirmed the diagnosis, and gave me ‘the look’ (you’ll know it when you see it). That night I saw Death waiting for me two days away, a fact the doctor confirmed in my follow-up a week later.
The first time out other than to urgent care, a tiny, elderly Chinese woman, who had escaped the Cultural Revolution, approached me through a crowd and asked straight up: “Are you a vegetarian?”
I told her of the meditation and food poisoning from chicken. Her voice boomed like thunder, though without a trace of violence: “Don’t eat animals! Don’t eat animals!” It hit me in the solar plexus. ‘Ok, ok, I get it,’ and haven’t eaten flesh since.
You can become a vegetarian from the head, the heart, or the gut. Facing the choice, don’t choose. Go with your heart.
A UN Committee, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, put forth recommendations to Costa Rica that are very important in guaranteeing the rights of children and adolescents.
It urges the country to decriminalize abortions for minors and guarantee after care services as well. All member states must submit reports about how they will guarantee these rights.
Among observations from the committee is a recommendation to avoid stigmatization of girls and adolescents who want abortions, provide adolescents with information and safe, affordable contraceptive methods, and raise awareness about the harmful effects of early pregnancies on physical and mental health. Contraceptives and awareness campaigns should be available in all communities, including rural, coastal, and indigenous areas.
In 2017, a law was passed to punish more severely sexual encounters between adults and minors. From 2000 to 2018, Costa Rica reduced the percentage of births from mothers aged 10 to 17 from 8.5% of the total births to 6.4%.
At least seven real estate developments are taking place in la Sabana over the next three years. These include residential, lodging, and office spaces. Four of them are already showing significant progress.
The progress is seen both in construction and placement of units. Iconnia, Universal Tower, and the DoubleTree by Hilton are under construction. Nucleo Sabana already has 80% placement in its first stage.
In Iconnia, apartments will start at $140,000. 55% of the 300 are already sold.
There is 60% placement in the first stage of Torre Universal, including tenants like Microsoft and the Costa Rican Coalition of Development Initiatives. This corporate project will have restaurants and a terrace with gardens on the 14th level.
La Sabana is a strategic and important part of the city as it is and it’s importance and relevance is increasing. We will see a corporate center, plaza, and financial district developed there.
Are you considering hiring a software developer for your business? Software developers, also known as software engineers, use math, computer science, and engineering skills to design and build computer and internet systems for companies. They are your go-to source for any programming needs and share a lot of overlap with the information technology (IT) department in terms of knowledge and capability.
Software development is a hot career choice today with a large talent pool. Software developers can be found in virtually any company across any industry. If you run a business, chances are you use computers and the internet to help with your day-to-day operations. Hiring an in-house software developer can help keep your business running smoothly in the event that any technical difficulties occur.
There are several other benefits associated with hiring an in-house software developer. In this article, we’re covering everything you need to know, including skills, budgets, and more.
A Software Developer Possesses Several Important Skills
Software developers are often required to know multiple programming languages before starting in a position, and many will be trained in additional areas upon starting a job.
Below are a few of the skills a successful software engineer will possess than can help your business.
Programming languages: Java, Ruby, PHP, and C++, to name a few. They will also be skilled in Docker programs like JFrog, which feature developer tools for website building.
SQL and Access: They will possess database knowledge that is necessary for working with vast amounts of information for your company.
Project management: Ability to manage multiple projects at different stages, keep them organized and accurately reporting to superiors.
Attention to detail: Because one small error in a line of code can lead to user issues and security breaches, software developers are known for their keen precision.
Collaboration: Software developers are usually part of teams and work with various departments across the company even though much of their day-to-day work is independent. They will have to communicate with team members to develop software and resolve system issues.
Ability to work under press: Meeting stressful deadlines and responding to urgent problems require composure under pressure.
Good memory: Software engineers must call back information they may not have used for years at the drop of a hat, meaning they must have a good memory.
Critical thinking: As a software engineer, you’ll be expected to brainstorm creative solutions and find workable answers when a system or app is broken.
Ability to focus: Software developers work on long projects for hours or days at a time, meaning they need to stay focused and sharp in order to be productive.
A Software Developer Can Be Trained to Meet Your Needs
When you hire a software developer, you are hiring someone who is skilled in several different aspects of technology and beyond. Unlike some careers, educational requirements for software engineers tend to be very specific. Here are just a few degrees that they tend to hold:
Software Engineering
Computer Science
Computer Programming and Analysis
Information Systems
Mathematics
If you want to hire a software developer fresh out of college with little experience, this may come as a benefit. The starting pay will be lower than senior engineers, and it allows you to shape their knowledge to specifically fit your business needs. In fact, many companies prefer to hire software engineers with little experience after they graduate so that they can train them on their specific software and programs. Training is very important for engineers and may take several months, longer than the average employee at many firms.
Other Benefits of an In-House Software Developer
Hiring an in-house software developer as opposed to outsourcing as several other noteworthy benefits.
First, these software developers are a better cultural fit for your company and understand its needs more specifically. Being in-house, they are more motivated to achieve these goals for your company.
Software developers that are in-house are easier to communicate with because they are face-to-face with other team members.
In addition, changes get done with a much quicker turnaround since there is less of a lag time between noting a problem and communicating it with the developer.
Finally, hiring an in-house software developer will maximize your work productivity as problems get resolved in a much quicker fashion. If you were to outsource to a developer, you would have to wait for them to first get in contact with you, understand the problem, and then work to resolve it.
Overall, hiring an in-house software developer is an important part of running a successful company, especially if the company is rooted in technology. Consider taking the step towards building a powerful development team. How big the team is largely depends on the needs of the company; you may only need one developer to keep things streamlined.
The Chinese are to begin the second stage of the national Stadium which represents an investment of $10 million and will take 10 months to complete. Most of the investment comes from China but the Costa Rican Institute of Sports and Recreation will pay employee insurance, INS policies, and exempting taxes on imported materials.
The stadium was inaugurated nine years ago. Before it’s construction, an agreement was made that the Chinese would return to execute a second stage. The new works will start in about 15 days when the materials arrive.
The team will include 13 Chinese citizens and 40 to 60 locals. The plan was to use mostly Chinese workers but the Coronavirus outbreak prevents people from moving from China to Costa Rica.
They will remodel the fire system and implement a pump room and sprinkler system. The electricity system will also be updated. Lamps will be replaced. Handrails will be installed on the stairs.
Karolay Serrano’s boyfriend ordered her murder in August to hide his relationship with her from his formal partner. He contacted a 16-year-old who linked him to two alleged hitmen who were 17 at the time. They and a 19-year-old thought to be involved were apprehended.
The 26-year-old woman, mother of a 3-year-old girl, left her job, took the bus, walked 400 meters to her home then entered a white vehicle and was never seen alive again. Her body was found in a mountainous area near the Barva volcano.
It was her family members who combed the area and found bone remains and her sneakers. Traces of blood were found in the vehicle and on cell phones and clothing that were seized.
The Public Ministry is investigating the adults for qualified homicide. The minors are being tried separately but for the same crime. The apprehended are going to be taken to the Prosecutor’s Office and precautionary measures will be requested.
The fundamental question of our time is: Does a prototype exist somewhere in this world that can provide an adequate response to the human crisis?
To my mind, the answer is no, because an unprecedented crisis in humankind’s relationship with nature means an unprecedented crisis of consciousness, requiring an unparalleled response.
It’s a difficult truth to face. One of the leading mainstream mouthpieces for the status quo begins his latest column in the New York Times by saying, “Almost everybody admires the Nordic model.”
Implausibly, the esteemed ‘thought leader’ proposes an American “bildung,” a German word without English equivalent that means “the complete moral, emotional, intellectual and civic transformation of the person.”
Arising from a very progressive 19th century approach to education, Nordic visionaries created “folk schools” that made “lifelong learning a part of the natural fabric of society.”
What worked in pouring the foundation in the 1800’s for Nordic success in lessening economic disparity and social misery, and building a modern society, would require a psychological revolution to even be seriously considered in present-day America. Then again that’s precisely what’s urgently required.
It’s galling to have a leading conservative intellectual (I know, the phrase has become oxymoronic) seriously suggest that American educators “work hard to develop the student’s internal awareness.”
Why are the very media people largely responsible for turning America into a profoundly sick and dead land the same ones still diagnosing its ills and prescribing its cures?
The real agenda of the conservative’s praise of the “Nordica model” is revealed in his egregiously false premise: ““If schools do not instill a love of nation, there’s not going to be much shared responsibility.”
Nordic educators in the past may have “worked hard to cultivate each student’s sense of connection to the nation,” but we live in a completely different world, one in which the primacy of identifying with particular groups has become completely dysfunctional.
‘My country’ first and last is dead and gone.
Identifying with the nation as the cornerstone of civilization is utterly wrongheaded and destructive in a global society.
The NYT columnist cites “The Nordic Secret,” by Lene Rachel Andersen and Tomas Bjorkman, with the quote: “Bildung is the way that the individual matures and takes upon him or herself ever bigger personal responsibility towards family, friends, fellow citizens, society, humanity, our globe, and the global heritage of our species, while enjoying ever bigger personal, moral and existential freedoms.”
The pundit riffs, “Their intuition was that as people grow, they have the ability to go through developmental phases, to see themselves and the world through ever more complex lenses.”
That is not the way that mature human beings actually develop however. Self-knowing people do not “see themselves and the world through ever more complex lenses,” but awaken insight through unreactive, undivided observation, growing simpler and subtler in their understanding of themselves and the world.
Wondering if the NYT columnist had misinterpreted the Danish philosopher Lene Rachel Anderson’s work, I called her. To my dismay, she essentially agreed with him, though I came away from the conversation feeling that she was coming from a very different place.
Rachel Anderson accurately said people in America and Europe are “confused and anxious; they want to recapture what used to be, which leads to authoritarianism.”
“Intellectuals have been conveying that love for country is a bad thing,” she added, drawing a distinction (without a different to my mind) between ‘good’ nationalism and chauvinistic nationalism.
Love of country follows love of humanity. When put first, love of country precludes love of humanity.
The NYT pundit went completely off the rails: “Nordica educators help students see the forces always roiling inside the self — the emotions, cravings, wounds and desires. If you could see those forces and their interplay, as if from the outside, you could be their master and not their slave.
That is psychological, philosophical and spiritual gobbledygook. Who or what masters the roiling forces inside the self? Such a notion presupposes two selves, the one that is “always roiling,” and the “master” self that sees the roiling forces “as if from the outside.”
To the nationalist, the psychological separation of the self and the identification with particular groups (the essence of tribalism) are taken as givens.
The supposedly cohesive and permanent thing, the self, does not exist in actuality. The self is a program, an operating system in the chaotic conditioning of thought. It has become disordered and maladjusted all over the world. (Though as the saying goes, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”)
A psychological revolution means “the complete moral, emotional, intellectual and civic transformation of the person,” which entails ending the emotional center of the Copernican self, without importing self-comforting nonsense from the East like the “Higher Self.”
We don’t develop maturity by going from the simple to the complex, but by going from the complex to the simple. As individuals and a species now, we will either perpetually begin with wholeness, or sorrowfully end in fragmentation.
As a paranormal investigator, I have investigated haunted or cursed homes or buildings that have been built over an ancient Native American burial site. I investigated a cabin in Pioneer, California owned by Keith Dovichi. This cabin was extremely haunted and cursed, because it was built over an ancient Native American burial site. The curse was so intense for Keith, that he had scratch marks on his body. Keith’s story caught the attention of a major network and they created a documentary about the case called “When Ghosts Attack – Wicked Warriors”. During my time as a paranormal investigator, I have been invited to investigate ghostly activity at an Indian Reservation in Covelo, CA. I have been told by a member of the Native American council that when a curse is projected on a person, object or landmark, it’s very hard to end the curse. A good example is the Curse of Tippecanoe. The “curse” began when President William Henry Harrison (elected in 1840) died in office from pneumonia just one month after becoming President. According to a folk tale, the “curse” happened because then-General Harrison had fought on Native American grounds during the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe. The battle was famous, and “Old Tippecanoe” became Harrison’s nickname. But the battle made the Native Americans so angry that they cursed his name.
William Henry Harrison was the first President to be affected by the curse in 1841. The name Curse of Tippecanoe (also known as Tecumseh’s Curse, the Presidential Curse, Zero-Year Curse, the Twenty-Year Curse, or the Twenty-Year Presidential Jinx) is used to describe the death of Presidents of the United States in office while elected or re-elected in a year ending in “0”. The last President included in this “curse” to die was John F. Kennedy. He was elected in 1960 and assassinated in 1963. Two later Presidents elected in “0” years—Ronald Reagan (1980) and George W. Bush (2000)—survived assassination attempts. That is when the curse ended.
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Here is a listing of Presidents affected by the curse:
William Henry Harrison (1841) (Pneumonia)
Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865, second term) (Assassinated)
James A. Garfield (1881) (Assassinated)
William McKinley (1897-1901, second term) (Assassinated)
Warren G. Harding (1921-1923) (Pneumonia)
Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-1945, fourth term) (Brain hemorrhage)
John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) (Assassinated)
Now that the Curse of Tippecanoe has ended, I believe a new curse will be taking its place. President Donald Trump is ready to have an ancient Native American burial site bulldozed, because of his US/Mexico border wall. President Donald Trump has a total disregard for this ancient site at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which is in the desert region of Southwestern Arizona. This is now an upcoming construction site for the border wall and it encompasses an area that is sacred to the Tohono O’odham Nation. It’s a burial site not only for the Tohono O’odham Nation, but also a resting spot for the Apache Indians who fought against the Tohono O’odham Nation. If they bulldoze this ancient burial site, it would be an act of unimaginable desecration. A desecration so wrongful, a curse would manifest. I don’t know what the curse will bring. It could probably bring on tragedy at the border wall or perhaps tragedy at the White House. If this sacred site gets bulldozed, I guarantee there will be active paranormal activity at this site and some kind of curse will be generated from this site.
President Donald Trump is turning a blind eye to this desecration action and showing no respect to this ancient culture. The curse will cometh.
The Rincon de la Vieja volcano erupted on January 30th. The lake level dropped about 10 to 15 meters leaving fumaroles exposed. They now throw gases directly into the air rather than into water.
The sharp decrease in the level of water in the lake can be seen when comparing photos from 2018 to 2020. When comparing the photos you can also notice a slight wilting in the vegetation because of the acidity of falling fragments of rock that are between 400 and 800 degrees.
This time, the photos are brought to us by a joint effort from the Oviscori, the RSN, and the National Emergency Commission. The plane used to take the pictures was provided by the Air Surveillance Service of the Ministry of Security.
There are currently no signs that there will be another eruption but it seems that after the last one and frequent tremors there is some seal that broke and failed to reform, which is why the passage of internal fluids from the colossus is higher.
The Minister of the Presidency and the Minister of Transport are negotiating the Government’s potential involvement in regulating Uber, Didi, and related services in Costa Rica.
Their plan is completely opposite to the text that the Committee on Economic Affairs accepted. The ministers want to declare the platforms as public transport services, while the committee argues they are not public transport services rather a technology to access transportation.
The Ministers also returned to the idea of limiting the number of drivers for such services with the use of permits. Another idea entirely is to legalize the existence of the platforms but as private transportation services and without limiting the number of permits.
A quick resolution is not likely, although all involved hope to have dialogue lead to legislative solutions soon in order to benefit the people and legalize the use of platforms like Uber.
Volunteers helping to test the ethanol gasoline pilot plan are going to sign a contract with Recope to receive free fuel in exchange for their help, according to President Carlos Alvarado.
In the coming weeks, the President will sign a decree authorizing Recope to carry out the mixtures and determine the type. Additionally, two service stations will be authorized for the participants to fill their tanks.
Recope will establish the rules and responsibilities of the contract to be signed by participating car owners. Instead of being seen as free fuel, it will be in the contract as a payment for services rendered.
The vehicle owners will have to provide their opinions on the mix as well as make their cars available for testing before and during the pilot program to confirm the performance of participating engines.
Toward late afternoon, the light on a high overcast day becomes white and ethereally bright. Through the bare branches and beyond the tall pines, subtle hues of blue and gray catch the eye and capture the heart.
Sparrows with white ‘mohawk’ stripes on their heads take short bursts along the lawn as they search for morsels of food under the fruit tree. There’s a great affection for them, and even for the wily, aggressive jays.
Later, color spreads over the western sky, a soft salmon of such intense beauty that it brings the Earth and everything on it to a standstill for a few timeless minutes.
“Color is God,” I once heard a religious teacher say.
Standing in awe under that sky, suffused with color, including the most delicate blue between small striations of cumulus, I understand more deeply than ever what that means.
Can you view the Earth as if it were another planet? Our false familiarity with the Earth prevents us from seeing its beauty and feeling truly feel at home on this planet. The talk of “finding Earth 2.0” for our survival as a species is misguided in the extreme.
Harvard professor Cornel West rhetorically asks: “What does it mean to be stripped of your own consciousness?” For me that question cannot be answered by the intellect, only by complete negation in meditation.
We fear death because we believe the self has reality and we desire that it have permanence. We want the ‘me’ to continue forever, and like children, we don’t see why ‘I’ should end.
Ending the observer and self, initiating the movement of negation, and emptying oneself of psychological memory in the simple act of effortless attention to what is, there is a state of being totally beyond words, images and concepts. Can that potentiality be conveyed, through words or music?
A philosopher wrote recently in the New York Times about his childhood fears of death, which have continued into adulthood: “Why did I have so much joy and shared love just to someday have it all taken away, gone forever? And I understood ‘gone forever’ to mean never ever existing again. Done! Kaput! It made absolutely no sense to me.”
He continues, “As I grew older this existential dread stayed with me. There are times when, like the 17th-century thinker Blaise Pascal, I feel trapped between two infinities of meaninglessness.” Or as the existentialist Albert Camus put it, “conscious certainty of a death without hope.”
In his unfinished work, “Pensées,” Pascal wrote, “When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in an eternity before and after, the small space I fill engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified. The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me.”
When one actually communes with “the eternal silence of these infinite spaces” there is no fear; there is love. Deeper states of meditation recapitulate death, and even make a friend of death, so that there is not only renewal, but also perpetual beginning.
So is that why we are here, living between two eternities, to fully awaken and transcend death? And if we truly die while fully alive, what is death when we physically expire?
I have no death wish, and want to live as much as anyone. But unlike many philosophers, who think that life makes no sense because there is death, life only makes no sense to me because there is death.
The world of becoming and psychological memory, of time and self, no longer hold meaning. That isn’t to say I’ve completely ‘left the stream.’ But the furloughs from the prison of human consciousness during meditation are the most important thing in one’s life.
The brain, quieted and emptied of thought in all-inclusive, undirected attention gathered through passive observation, is a receiver for the numinous, the holy silence that imbues nature and the universe.
When the mind-as-thought falls totally quiet, the light of creation completely pierces through the material of the old consciousness. Since that consciousness is not ‘mine,’ but man’s, is something larger going on with these piercings?
I don’t know, but in the ensuing hours the residues within one fall back into the space opened by the piercing of the light, and one returns to the old, cumulative consciousness. (Presumably, illumination means the mind/brain does not return, but effortlessly remains in the light.)
All I’m sure of is that when awareness penetrates to that level, one has enters the infinite house of death, without a trace of fear. Not the death of cycles, of birth and death, but the ground of all being.
Orosi Valley is a nice spot for tourists from San Jose because it’s close by, accessible by all types of vehicles, and has such beautiful scenery and perfect weather with cool quiet nights and warm sunny days.
The best hidden restaurant in Orosi is called Orocay Bistro. It’s known for specialty cuts of meat as well as pizzas cooked in a wood stove. The soup in a bread bowl is a favorite among guests.
The place also has hotels and cabins. Complete with jacuzzis and fire pits, it’s the ideal place to enjoy a weekend getaway. There’s nothing quite like drinking a glass of wine by a fire on a breezy night.
The cost of a rustic cabin is ₡44.500 and that of a room with a view of cerro de la Muerte is ₡49.500. Each stay includes breakfast. Lunch is also available. Nearby, there are hiking trails, cycling, climbing, and canopy adventures.
