Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Reiki Resources @ Amazon.com

Introduction

Reiki (pronounced ray-kee) is a Japanese system of energy healing originated by Mikao Usui in 1922, as well as the "Universal Life Force" used in these techniques. The word is derived from rei (spirit) and ki (life force). The term ki (also transliterated chi and qi) will be familiar to those versed in traditional chinese medicine, particulary acupuncture and acupressure, and is in fact borrowed from the Chinese.

Usui lived only four years after founding the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai (Usui Reiki Healing Society) in Tokyo in 1922. His work was then carried on by his student, Chujiro Hayashi, who simplified and codified the teachings while focussing more on physical healing.

Hayashi's student Hawayo Takata is credited with introducing Reiki to the West. Travelling extensively in the U.S., Takata stressed the importance of charging money for Reiki treatments and teachings. Given the common inversion of the law of supply and demand in the U.S. (the more something costs, the more it's worth) this may have been useful. Almost all Reiki taught outside Japan can be attributed to her work.

John Harvey Gray was the third Reiki master trained by Takata to carry on that tradition, and is the longest-practicing Reiki Master Instructor in the West. Today there are many Reiki practitioners and instructors, each with their own empahses. Each has their adherents, and this brief discussion of the history of the tradition is not meant to imply the superiority of "pure" Reiki as handed down from Usui, but merely to outline the foundations of the practice.

Foundational Works on Reiki

Background

There is clearly a difference between living organisms and those which have expired, although the exact nature of the change defies scientific elucidation. There might well be a "Universal Life Energy," like Reiki just beyond the reach of our current technology. In the horror classic Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, this mysterious life-force was the then new and fascinating phenomenon of electricity. As mentioned earlier, the Chinese call it chi. It has also been referred to as ether, "the force," holy spirit, kundalini, mana, pneuma, prana, qudra, orgone, ruach, and silla as well as other names. ( For further information on these phenomena, you might want to consult Stefan Stenudd's Life Energy Encyclopedia)

Like Reiki, many of the systems that posit these life energies maintain that they reside in nodes -- most often referred to by the Hindu term chakras. They also maintain that this energy can be strengthened and balanced by various means. In the case of Reiki, the practitioner uses certain hand placements and positions on or just above the subject's body. The Reiki energy is said to flow from the practitioner's hands into the subject, stimulating the natural healing process. Subjects generally report feelings of tingling or warmth in the affected area, along with a sense of deep relaxation and well-being.

Training

Reiki training is divided into three levels or degrees. The first degree training, which typically takes only about two days, teaches the basic theory and hand placements used in Reiki. Students are given four "attunements" by a third degree (or master level) trainer. After recieving this basic reiki training, the student can treat herself or others.

The second degree Reiki training intoduces the use of symbols to enhance the strength of the Reiki energy and the distance over which it can be exerted. A fourth attunement is given, empowering students to use these symbols and enhancing their capacity for the flow of Reiki through them.

The third, or Master, degree of Reiki training involves one or more additional attunements, and a master-level symbol. Upon completeing the master training, one can teach the three levels of Reiki training and give the necessary attunements.

Since its introduction, many variations of the Reiki training have arisen, and there is considerable disagreement over what constitutes Reiki. Basically, the practice is what it is, and experience should dictate whether one chooses to incorporate a particular variation or not. There are, of course those who maintain that only one particular style or another should be called Reiki. Since there is no accreditation body for Reiki, this difference of opinion is unlikely to be resolved.

Reiki Listmania

A good way to approach an unfamiliar subject using Amazon.com as a source is to look over the Listmania® lists users have contributed. There may be disagreements within the Amazon community, as in society at large, but there is usually enough additional information to help you decide whose opinion you would value most.

Below are some of the many Reiki Listmanias chosen primarily for the quantity of additional information they present:

Reiki Forum

Amazon supports little-known (and under-utilized) forums where customers can exchange ideas on topics that interest them. Given the level of interest in Reiki demonstrated by reviewers, there really should be more going on at theReiki Forum, but that is subject to change!

People

Another neglected part of the Amazon site is their social networking pages. Even if you've never bought anything from Amazon.com, you can create an Amazon account and you will get a profile page where you can include as much (or as little) information about yourself as you wish. Here are some interesting people who have created Amazon content about Reiki:

Books

If you've looked at the Listmania pages above, you've discovered that there are a number of books that are "standards" mentioned in almost every case. (If you haven't checked out these lists, you should -- their authors are much more knowledgable about Reiki than I am.) I'm listing some of those here, as well as some that are a little more specialized, although they are not necessarily for advanced students only:

Please note that this is just a sampling of all the Reiki Books at Amazon. There are always new ones being published, and older titles may be reprinted or rediscovered by new audiences, so it's a good idea to do a little searching on your own. If you're really interested in the topic, you might invest in The Reiki Sourcebook or the Reiki News Magazine to aid you in furher research.

Selected DVDs by Steve Murray

Most Reiki practioners would agree that live training is preferable to books or DVDs. Nonetheless, many have recommended these DVDs. They can certainly at least serve as an easy and inexpensive introduction to Reiki. If you find they fully meet your needs, so much the better.

Caveats

Western science tends to have a blind spot with respect to many techniques of alternative medicine. Since science, by definition, deals with measurable and reproduceable experimental data, it is limited by the current state of the art in instrumentation. Phenomena that are not currently measurable can neither be proven nor disproven scientifically -- they simply lie outside the domain of current scientific discipline.

This has unfortunately contributed to the bias of Western medicine toward becoming a "disease care system" relying heavily on highly invasive, but scientifically verifiable therapies, primarily pharmaceticals and surgery. Disease prevention and the positive promotion of health, even through such acknowledged methods as proper diet and exercise has been neglected almost to the point of complete exclusion. The message seems to be that one can engage in all manner of stressful and self-destructive lifestyle choices, then take the appropriate pill to continue on one's reckless course.

There is a great deal of merit to many "alternative" techniques such as Reiki, but let the buyer beware, because the lack of scientific verification also permits considerable latitude and even downright fraud. For a reasonably balanced view of the merits of various holistic therapies, you might refer to Andrew Weil, M.D., a respected practitioner of western medicine as well as numerous alternative techniques who calls his approach integrative medicine.

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Permatex Gasketing Products

The last time I bought any Permatex, (actually called Form-A-Gasket) it came in two flavors -- hardening and non-hardening. As of this posting Amazon.com search alone lists 452 results for "Permatex." The Permatex website is a wealth of information on these products, but it requires a lot of drilling down and doesn't offer online sales. Actually, the very last time I bought Permatex was a couple days ago, when I got some "Water Pump & Thermostat Housing RTV Silicone" (22071) to repair a loose radiator hose connection, which is what inspired this page. RTV is an acronym for "Room Temperature Vulcanizing."

Sometimes it can be a real challenge finding what you want at Amazon. In the case of these Permatex products, it's pretty easy -- if you know how. The Amazon automotive products editors have (usually) included the Permatex part numbers in their product names, so you can just search for "Permatex" + "part#" and find the appropriate product. (Use the actual part number, of course, from the Permatex website). The search box below should help:

NOTE: Search results will often include two or more pages for the same part. Typically the "cheaper" one is supplied by a third-party vendor and will include shipping charges, while the "higher" part comes straight from Amazon and is eligible for free shipping on orders of $25 or more.

I've used Permatex gasketing products for years and never had any cause for complaint. I have less experience with some of their newer product lines, which I suspect are corporate acquisitions. I have no reason to believe they aren't good -- I simply have no personal experience with many of them:

Gasketing Products

These products build on the foundation of the Permatex® (Form-A-Gasket) line, and what most people think of when they hear the name. In addition to the "original" products, there is now a wide range of RTV Silicon products.

I originally intended to cover all the Permatex products listed at Amazon.com, but (obviously) 452 search results ran into a very long page. I'll be adding to this post "soon," but for now, the gasketing products are probably what nost people are looking for.

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Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Clean Your Fuel Tank!

I recently had the dubious pleasure of replacing the fuel tank selector valve on my 1989 Ford F-150. It's a kind of Rube Goldberg contraption that uses pressure from a low-pressure pump located in the fuel tank to operate valves that direct gas to the high pressure pump, filter, fuel injector rail and back to the tank. I really don't expect parts containing rubber diaphragms to last much more than 20 years, so I wasn't that perturbed, although the availability of this Ford-only part left much to be desired. Compared to the caucus race of locating the part (for "only" $80) installation was uneventful.

Unfortunately, the substitution didn't fix my problem. To my surprise, the valve was actually good except for being stuck in one position by the accumulation of gunk from the gas tank. (I should have checked!) In this day of skyrocketing gasoline prices, you might well want to check your tank(s), because a car will still run with a disturbing accumulation of sludge in the tank, but it will perform a lot better with a good supply of clean gas!

Siphon a little gas from your tank into a mason jar and compare its color to some clean gas from an approved container. Is it nice and light, almost clear -- or is your gas an amber yellow tending toward brown? If so, you probably have an alarming accretion of tarry goo in your tank. Gasoline, kerosene, and Diesel fuel are all petroleum distillates -- refineries simply isolate a particular class of hydrocarbons from crude oil using an elaborate "still" called a fractionating tower. They also alter their product mix by "cracking" and polymerizing, but we won't go into that -- it's enough to know that the long-chain hydrocarbons (like gear oil) are dark and viscous, while short-chain fuels are light and fluid. Gas is really just very thin oil.

Of course everybody knows you can't make 200-proof moonshine without distilling your mash more than once, and your fuel isn't all one type of hydrocarbon molecule, either -- there are lighter and heavier molecules mixed in with those with average-length chains. Over time, the shorter-chain molecules are burned or evaporate, and the longer-chain ones accumulate as a tarry sludge in the bottom of your tank. As you add gas some of this residue dissolves, adulterating your fuel -- eventually to the point where your electronic fuel injection can no longer cope with the garbage you're feeding it.

Removing your fuel tank is relatively straightforward. Generally speaking you will find a fill tube, fuel delivery and return lines, an electrical connector and a vent line to be detatched. You then only need to empty the tank and remove the bolts that secure it to the frame. If you don't already have one, a shop manual for your particular vehicle is recommended for more detailed instructions. A floor jack is helpful in this procedure, but not absolutely required.

The traditional method of cleaning a fuel tank is steam cleaning, but I was unable to find anyone who still offers this service locally. I have no idea what automotive repair shop hours are going for these days since they priced me out of the market years ago, but I suspect that if you do find someone to clean your tank, they will charge you nearly the cost of a new tank. That would account for the disappearance of the service. The prospect of taking a perfectly good tank to the landfill didn't appeal to me, so I devised the following cleaning procedures:

If the design of your tank is such that you can get your hand inside it, begin by scraping as much goo and rust from the inner surfaces as you can. This is a thankless task, but its fast and productive, so keep at it using whatever paint scrapers, putty knives, pry bars, and wire brushes you have on hand. After removing all the debris you can reach, the following procedures will be much more effective on the relatively small amounts of contaminants that remain.

Old-fashioned soap-making involved mixing grease (usually lard) with caustic soda or lye (NaOH). You can remove the oily residues from your tank with crystal drain cleaner. I used Crystal Drano, but any brand should be fine. You might also use any suitable oven cleaner. These products are hard on skin and eyes, so the use of rubber gloves and safety goggles are recommended, if not expected. You don't have to saponify all the tar in your tank, but just enough to dislodge it from the metal surfaces, so go easy on the lye and add more as required. Be sure that all the surfaces of the tank get a good soaking.

Once the tar is removed, you're likely to find hydrolyzed aluminum silicates in the tank -- better known as dirt. You can remove this by sloshing around a strong solution of laundry detergent or trisodium phosphate. Lather, rinse, repeat. When the soapy water comes out clean, you've done the best you can.

If your tank is polypropylene, count yourself lucky. If it's steel, you're going to want to do something about rust. Due to the nature of metallic bonding and the accumulation of electrical charges, "rust never sleeps," but you can slow it down a little. The "right" way to do this is by lightly sand-blasting or bead-blasting the interior of the tank. You could do the same thing with sandpaper if you could reach all the surfaces. Of course, the paper is just a convenience -- the essential abrasive is sand.

Sponge out the inside of your tank and let it dry thoroughly. Wet sand will clump together and won't expose as many jagged little surfaces as dry sand. Put a generous amount in the tank and tilt it back and forth. If you were using sandpaper, you know that the harder you pushed down the faster this would go. Unfortunately, you can't exert much pressure here, so just be patient and think of what a great work-out you're getting. Peek into the tank with a flashlight to see how you're doing. It is not necessary to sand the tank down to bright metal, you just need to remove the loose rust scale. If you like, you can use phosphoric acid (better known as naval jelly) at this point.

Don't try to remove all the rust. Your tank started out as galvinized steel, but now that the zinc coating has eroded away, the phosphoric acid can convert the thin coating of rust that remains to metalophosphate, providing at least some corrosion resistance through passivation. You can ensure that all the acid is neutralized by treating the tank with baking soda. Be sure to rinse and dry the tank thoroughly, and you're done!

If you tend to be a picky, don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good. Your tank will probably never pass a white glove test, but think of the pounds of gunk you've removed rather than the ounces or grams that remain. On the other hand, if you're a lick and a promise sort, perservere. A little elbow grease now will save you a lot of grief down the road.

If all this seems like a lot of trouble to go through, it is. I'm sure many more people will simply replace their tanks than will follow this procedure. Hopefully, a few will buy their new tanks here. On the other hand, there are some who are as stubborn as I am, and quite a few who are offended by the cultural notion that everything is disposable. If you do rehabilitate your tank, at some point it will occur to you what a poor choice petroleum fuels are. You might even wonder why gasoline is the "mainstream" choice, and gaseous fuels like methane are termed "alternative" fuels.

Consider the fact that many fleet operators converted to compressed natural gas (CNG) decades ago, because it was more cost-effective, yet there is only one production CNG car on the market today, and practically no CNG filling stations, despite the fact that anybody with natural gas and electicity can "Phill" up at home. Consider that GM built and leased an electric car, the EV1 (to comply with California's stringent emissions requirements) that everybody seemed to love, but killed it because it didn't break down and contribute to the lucrative repair side of their business.

That goo isn't just in your tank. It's in your fuel lines, fuel gauge sender, injectors, valves, cylinders -- throughout your engine really. All completely unnecessary, but very lucrative for the special interests that continue to maintain that alternative energy technologies of twenty years ago "will take decades to develop." Don't let the fact that T. Boone Pickens' plan is to make a pile of money for T. Boone Pickens distract you from the fact that cost-effective alternative energy is available now.

Further resources

Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives Book
Who Killed the Electric Car? DVD
21st Century Complete Guide to Natural Gas Vehicles CD
Build Your Own Electric Vehicle Book



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Friday, July 18, 2008

Popular Women's Shoe Brands @ Endless.com (18 - Ci)

We're understandably excited about Amazon.com's new Shoe and Handbag spin-off, Endless.com. As we've noted before, many customers buy two pairs of shoes in adjacent sizes, and return the one that doesn't fit. The Endless policy of free return shipping certainly acknowledges the usefulness of this approach.

Endless.com is still in its "Beta" testing phase, so you may have trouble with the site being slow or balky from time to time. Rest assured that the server-side software has the same robust reliability that has made Amazon.com synonymous with online shopping. If you do have problems reaching the site, you can use the "Shoe Mania" links below to locate products in our Amazon aStore. If you wish to order through Endless.com, simply cut and paste the name of the product in the form below. This should take you to a page at Endless.com that you can save whether the site is currently available or not. (This really isn't often a problem, but it's annoying when it is.)

Note that spelling does count, right down to whether initials are followed by periods or not. Capitalization is less critical, so I've tried to standardize that since so many brands are either SHOUTING or channeling e. e. cummings.

Here are some popular brands available at both Amazon sites:

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