I rarely do things by half. If I was evil, I'd be The Dark Side Of The Force =)
Post a Random Fact About Yourself
- Thread starter Sibyl
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Of course.
One of my brothers got into hypnotism a few years ago. It is quite real. He hypnotized me once. He told me to put my hand palm down on a table and then suggested that my hand was so heavy that I couldn't lift it from the table. I actually was able to take my hand off the table, but it took a lot of effort, and it wasn't more than an inch or two.
On a related note, so not that random a fact, one of my ancestors was Swiss Neuroanatomist and Psychologist Auguste Forel, who (among other things)pioneered in hypnotherapy in the 19th century. One of those "among other things" was eugenics, though, so that kind of puts a damper on the family pride.
One of his four daughters, Marthe, was my great-grandfather, married to my great-grandfather Dr. Arthur Brauns, who had my grandfather on my father's side Wolf Brauns.
^It is only very rarely that we find people who are perfectly good or perfectly bad. It's in the human nature to be ambivalent. Also, the rules and values to which people are educated change a lot with time. There's a somewhat extreme example from my own family, only one generation earlier than yours:
Bishop Sailer, the teacher and friend of King Ludwig I of Bavaria was my great-great-granduncle. He was a rationalist and philanthropist and was revered almost like a saint by his contemporaries. However, some 40 years after his death he was accused of and condemned for having been a heretic by the inquisition in Rome. He had tried to reform the catholic church and reconcile it with the protestant one. Also, he insisted that a priest must not exclusively focus on religion but help his parish members in all problems of their lives like unemployment, financial troubles, lack of education etc. Those were opinions that at the mid-1800s were not exactly favoured by the Vatican. But since the 1900s they are standard and so poor uncle went from local saint to heretic and back to revered reformer within less than a lifespan.
(btw, I think that pic in the English Wikipedia entry doesn't do him credit. I much prefer Sommerhalder's portrait in the German entry: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan...akob_Sommerhalder_-_Johann_Michael_Sailer.jpg - he had a great sense of humour as I learned when I read his books, and in this portrait it shows pretty clearly
I inherited the rationalism, the grin and the nose).
Bishop Sailer, the teacher and friend of King Ludwig I of Bavaria was my great-great-granduncle. He was a rationalist and philanthropist and was revered almost like a saint by his contemporaries. However, some 40 years after his death he was accused of and condemned for having been a heretic by the inquisition in Rome. He had tried to reform the catholic church and reconcile it with the protestant one. Also, he insisted that a priest must not exclusively focus on religion but help his parish members in all problems of their lives like unemployment, financial troubles, lack of education etc. Those were opinions that at the mid-1800s were not exactly favoured by the Vatican. But since the 1900s they are standard and so poor uncle went from local saint to heretic and back to revered reformer within less than a lifespan.
(btw, I think that pic in the English Wikipedia entry doesn't do him credit. I much prefer Sommerhalder's portrait in the German entry: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan...akob_Sommerhalder_-_Johann_Michael_Sailer.jpg - he had a great sense of humour as I learned when I read his books, and in this portrait it shows pretty clearly
I inherited the rationalism, the grin and the nose).
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How does that work? Do they exhume your body and burn it at the stake? (Great image for a post in the Hallowe'en season, I might add.)
When I was ten, my friends doubted that I was a rationalist unaffected by superstition, so I bet that I would go through the cemetery, In the middle of the night without a light, during a full moon (which was practical to me since it lighted the way, but ironically made it spookier to some) and did so, none of them dared to follow me but they split into two groups, one on each end of the graveyard. After I completed the trip without any trouble, three of them agreed to come with me to renew the experience. It was no big deal actually but I earned that day some kind of a reputation.
No, he wasn't exhumed. The King would have strongly opposed to that. But all his teachings and his books were forbidden by the vatican for a few decades, even a very interesting non-theological booklet he had written: "wisdom in the lane" (Die Weisheit auf der Gassen). It is about popular proverbs and their history.
How does that work? Do they exhume your body and burn it at the stake? (Great image for a post in the Hallowe'en season, I might add.)
The ban took effect only amongst clerics and even there were lots who ignored Rome's orders in this particular case as they were pupils of the banned bishop. Civilians printed and read his books more or less openly.
random fact about myself: I grew up next to a cemetry and for us kids in the quarter it always was a great playground. Back then, dead people would be layed out publicly in the morgue behind big windows - a bit like a shop's windows - and we kids must have seen several hundred dead bodies until the practize of public laying out ceased in the 1980s. I have only a vague recollection but I remember how calm and peaceful it was and that the bodies looked like big wax dolls (propably an effect of the weak light bulbs). Looking back, these positive experiences might have participated to me doing forensics as a sideline.
I never understood what's supposed to be scary about the dead. I find that the living are the ones to fear.
My mom tells me that one of our ancestors was some high-ranking official/translator for the King of Sweden.
Other than that, I'm related to one of Napolean's soldiers and one of the judges during the Salem Witch Trials. I'm less-than-proud of that one.
Oh, and someone played a message on their answering machine (remember those?!?) once and I responded with, "Who was that?"
I was told that it was me. I didn't even recognize my own voice but I was told that it was how I sounded!
Other than that, I'm related to one of Napolean's soldiers and one of the judges during the Salem Witch Trials. I'm less-than-proud of that one.
Oh, and someone played a message on their answering machine (remember those?!?) once and I responded with, "Who was that?"
I was told that it was me. I didn't even recognize my own voice but I was told that it was how I sounded!
When I was very young, maybe two, I was playing in a sand spot (people told me, I don't actually remember it). A kid of about the same age joined me on the spot and in about two minutes we were hitting each other with plastic shovels. This was likely my first fight ever. I don't know who the other kid was.
I survive by caffeine. I hate coffee and tea.
I don't just love coffee, I need coffee. I wake up at 5 AM every day for work. If I didn't have coffee, I could not function that early.
In other words:
"It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion."
In other words:
"It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion."
When I was a kid we used to have contests about who could throw a stone the farther away, the most accurately or who could do the most ricochets. I was usually one of the best if not the best. If I were an American I would have been good at baseball, I think, but we didn't play that in France back then.
^ we used to have cherry stone spitting contests =) My mom was pretty unbeatable at it.
When I was two years old I was playing with my little red plastic pick-up truck in my driveway (this was my grandparents house at the time). My mom and my grandma where inside having lunch and talking, and had the front door open so they could hear me.
Suddenly they came running outside because they heard me "screech at the top of my lungs" (their words), and they thought I had hurt myself. When they found me, they said I looked up at them with my "little eyes this big around" (again, their words), and I was pointing across the street to the horse farm that was there in 1972 (its been track houses since 1980), and I yelled "Tall dogs! Tall dogs!". My mom said she looked across to the field and saw two teenage girls walking their horses. She picked me up and went across the street and asked the girls if I could pet them which I then did. Mom said she and the girls got a big laugh out of the fact that even after they explained to me that the animals weren't "Tall dogs", my two year old brain couldn't imagine anything else and I continued to insist that's what they were.
Apparently, when I was two, I knew what a dog was, but had never seen a horse before.
Suddenly they came running outside because they heard me "screech at the top of my lungs" (their words), and they thought I had hurt myself. When they found me, they said I looked up at them with my "little eyes this big around" (again, their words), and I was pointing across the street to the horse farm that was there in 1972 (its been track houses since 1980), and I yelled "Tall dogs! Tall dogs!". My mom said she looked across to the field and saw two teenage girls walking their horses. She picked me up and went across the street and asked the girls if I could pet them which I then did. Mom said she and the girls got a big laugh out of the fact that even after they explained to me that the animals weren't "Tall dogs", my two year old brain couldn't imagine anything else and I continued to insist that's what they were.
Apparently, when I was two, I knew what a dog was, but had never seen a horse before.
I don't really have much of a sweet-tooth. After hardly any trick-or-treaters showed up tonight I am now stuck with bags of candy.
I don't really like candy either. If I want a snack, I'll go for a bowl of cereal. Candy does not appeal to me at ALL.
Needless to say, Halloween is not really a thing with me either. I didn't buy any candy, and no trick-or-treaters came to my house. I'm not going all "bah Humbug" here, I'm just not into it.
Needless to say, Halloween is not really a thing with me either. I didn't buy any candy, and no trick-or-treaters came to my house. I'm not going all "bah Humbug" here, I'm just not into it.
