denis bider

Jana didn't enjoy life on a Caribbean island. But what I loved about it was the sun. I could go out in mid-day, stand in the heat for ten minutes, and soak it all in. It felt so good. I felt recharged. It put me in a good mood, and I enjoyed the afterglow the rest of the day.

I'm an indoor person. Perhaps you are, too. When we moved to Costa Rica, my exposure to sun dropped to nearly zero. San Jose is often rainy or cloudy; it's a busy city, where it's not as pleasant to go out; and my sleep schedule rotates, so I'm often asleep during the day.

I knew all this. I knew I wasn't getting enough sun, so I got vitamin D pills. I took one a day, 400 IU, the then FDA-recommended dietary allowance. I didn't know that this wasn't nearly enough. I even asked a doctor if I'm taking an appropriate amount. He dismissed the question. He had no knowledge of vitamin D-3, or its importance.

A year into our life in Costa Rica, I felt a palpable sense of ennui. I obje…

I've had things happen to me that I couldn't otherwise explain, so I sought explanations. It turns out that knowledge about our life when we aren't in a human body is readily available, it's just that few people want to know it. Without further ado, here is a reading list if you'd like to learn about this topic.

Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind
by Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer

Materialism is the conviction that the universe consists only of dead matter as our current physics knows it, and that our consciousness inexplicably emerges from this. This book will prepare you gently for the possibility that materialism is not merely an unproven jump to a conclusion, but has actually been shown false with experiments. The science being done on this is rigorous, but isn't being taken seriously because materialism is a faith: an unproven belief that people adhere to in defense against the unknown. Trying to disprove it evok…