Pam Grout E2 Experiment 1

[Ludivina Speed]

Thatis not to say no good things happened in the past two days. But there were no unexpected good things. They were good things that had been pre-planned before I even picked up the book. Good things that happened despite the unexpected gift of turning my toilet into a Jackson Pollack four times a day.

Also, it should be noted, I wanted this to work. I was actively projecting positive thoughts and whatnot. I was not intentionally crapping on the process. (I was also not intentionally crapping in that Rite Aid, and I offer my full apologies and condolences to those involved.)

In this kind of faith-based experiment, this is the part where I start to second guess myself. Did I do something wrong? Did I not believe hard enough? Did my skepticism skew the results? Or have I just failed to see the positive side of my butt becoming a two-day poop volcano?

Also, this experiment reminded me of an old episode of Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t! where they debunked the Ouija board. In their experiment, they blindfolded three spirit-board believers and had them ask a ghost yes-or-no questions. They also secretly turned the board 180 degrees. Unsurprisingly, the three participants repeatedly pushed the planchette to where they thought the answers were rather than to the places they actually were. (Skip to the thirteen minute point of this video.)

Second, I would make an effort to secure my hands to minimize the effect of my own motion moving the wands. To this end I strapped a couple of workout weights on my wrists and placed them on a book on a tabletop.

For the positive experiment I did a better job starting from neutral, but then the wands seemed to just move at random. Also, with the fast-motion you can definitely see my hands moving, which negates the idea the wands are being moved by any invisible force.

Regardless of these lackluster experimental results, I do believe that having a positive attitude is beneficial for your overall health and social well being, and that being positive encourages others to direct positivity back to you. And I do believe in the science of matter and energy as described by Albubbles Einsnuggle. But this experiment did zilch to convince me that my thoughts directly influence and control a literal invisible energy field that envelops my body.

Anyone else ever witness something like that? Ever witness a person in action who believes, without a shadow of a doubt, that the entire world is out to get them? Are you that person?

Like I said, I failed at this experiment. Pam gave you 24 hours to look for sunset beige vehicles, and another 24 hours to look for purple feathers. So first I had to look up what colour sunset beige actually was.

Immediately I saw at least 12 things that were this colour. Learning from my mistakes from the day before, I realized that the only way that I could realistically find the correct coloured car was by walking around the city. So instead of taking a bus down the hill towards the skytrain, I walked (perhaps it was unrealistic to believe that I could do this experiment successfully from a table in coffee shop that was facing the street, and looking up occasionally). During this quick 15 minute walk I saw a green popsicle, several green jackets, green advertisements on bus stops, green hair. I mean this colour was EVERYWHERE. Alas, I did not see even one green car. I did, however, see THREE sunset beige cars on my walk home from work. Go figure.

Two days later I decided to try the purple feather experiment. Same idea expect that this time you had to look for purple feathers. For the first 12 hours of this experiment I was either inside, or writing at a coffee shop. I REALLY wanted to find a purple feather so at 7pm I put on my boots and coat and decided to go for a walk around Vancouver. This being winter, it was dark and my mind was so distracted that I again consistently forgot what I was looking for. I think I may have seen a purple feather on a boa on display in a sex shop window, but it was too dark to tell.

I had success with experiment 1 and was just trying it again today and had just briefly looked at experiment 2. I noticed the blurb about the purple feather and even though I was not looking for it and was redoing experiment 1 I went out for a walk and low and behold I looked onto the ground and saw a purple feather. There is truly something to this.

I tried this experiment with three different people, and each of those people showed up in my life within days (or hours) of starting the experiment. In the span of one week my relationships had improved in all areas of my life. The change was so significant that I had to take a large step back and reflect. Were things this good to begin with, only I was too blinded by old paradigms to see it?

1. The dude abides experiment. Tell the Force that it has 48 hours to make its presence know. Ask for a sign or a blessing. Keep an open mind and observe. See if anything different comes into your awareness.

2. The Volkswagen Jetta experiment. Pick an image of something simple, like yellow butterflies or a purple feather. Look for this item over the next 48 hours. See if you start to see this item.

3. The Einstein wand experiment. Make an Einstein wand out of a coat hanger and straws. Hold it in front of you. Think of something that frightens you and see how the wand reacts. Think of something positive and see the wand move again.

Keeping: Camponotus sansabeanus - C. vicinus - Formica francoeuri - Liometopum occidentale - Pogonomyrmex californicus - P. rugosus - P. subnitidus - Solenopsis molesta - S. xyloni - Tapinoma sessile - Temnothorax sp.

so what happened was that since the water and cotton touched the grout, the grout stayed constantly wet and the water started to run out fast. I will make another one, and leave a half inch or so of glass so the cotton doesn't touch the grout and therefore not wick all the water.

The experiment Grout lays out in the book is to ask the Field of Potentiality to send an unexpected gift or blessing with the deadline of exactly 48 hours. It was 11 p.m. at night when I started the experiment, and was excited at the possibilities.

Why had I not received anything unexpected? Did I do something wrong? How can I tell people the universe has their back and is always sending signs, if I just failed this experiment? I went to bed thinking maybe I would start over again tomorrow.

When I woke up the next morning, I was still thinking about how I could have possibly messed up this assignment. I live my life looking for and receiving signs from the universe, from loved ones who have passed, and from my angels and guides. What did I do wrong?

I walked into my home office the next morning and realized what happened. The day before, I was going through the mail we receive at Elevated Existence, which is often filled with new books, CDs and DVDs to review. In one of the packages, a musician, Paul Avgerinos, included his CD Bhakti and a beautiful dark green T-shirt with the same word on it. As I walked into my office that morning, I saw the T-shirt and it hit me. That was such a nice surprise, and yes, a very unexpected gift!

I have this book and did this experiment about 6 months ago. I have to say how shocked I was when my husband came home that very night with a bottle of wine which he said our friend had given him. The friend specifically mentioned for him to tell me that it was for me! Totally unexpected and out of the blue for this particular friend to have done. Definitely made a believer out of me!

As part of the Experimental Archaeology Conference EAC12 hosted by EXARC this spring, I ran a handful of gruit experiments. Many gruit-beer experiments concern themselves with flavor and herbal components. They do not consider how or why the gruit substance may contribute to a longer shelf life, nor the reason its reputation as an essential element in brewing persisted for centuries even after hops came into common use. The consistent occurrence of grain in the surviving medieval tax records indicates that the grain aspect of the malt could be considerably more important than previously thought.

My experiments examine how the gruit substance affects fermentation and alcohol content, and therefore shelf life, leading to greater economic possibilities. In this blog post I will show you behind the scenes, so to speak, and share with you a bit more context and explanation than I was able to squeeze into my 5-minute video poster presentation. The experiments do not discuss gruit in the modern obsession of brewing with whatever herb one can get their hands on; to capture the essence of terroir, preferably in defiance of the hops establishment. While being much fun in its own right, it is not a very historic practice. My interest is in the medieval product itself: the substance of gruit and its herbal additives, and how this relates to the increased economics of the produced beer.

Contrary to what many modern publications would like us to believe, the historical sources are quite persistent that gruit is something more than just a collection of regionally unique herbs. A closer look at the etymology of the word gruit indicates an intimate connection with malt, in the form of coarsely ground grain. Even with variable medieval spelling, the different variants of the word are consistent with each other, and mean either the substance gruit, the beer brewed with it, coarsely ground grain, and the porridge made with such. Several Latin deeds use the words frumentum and polenta to describe the substance gruit, both words indicating a grain product. (Doorman 1955, 72; Ebbing 1994, 26-27; Kieft 1964, 165; Verberg 2018, 69)

I had located three publications which shared recipes on how to make grout. (Know of any others? Please share!) The 17th century publication quotes the 16th century source, and all three are about British grout. This is not unexpected, as by the 16th century, although in some areas the taxation is still active, the production and sale of the gruit substance had just about died out without a trace.

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