== Agenda ==
* Check In
* Review WWWs
* Weekly Events Logistics
* Review Agenda
* Children International
* Spiritual experience experiments
* Evaluation
== Check In ==
* Ben ... sleepy. I wish my laptop wasn't dying.
* Eric ... just got back from UU, and they always make me feel good ... also excited about harvesting my potatoes today
== WWWs from last time ==
* Ben ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
* <s>Ben ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
* Ben ... buy some green food coloring ... by Saturday November 2
* Ben ... test floating my candles ... by next call</s>
* Brandon ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
* Brandon ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
* Brandon ... create the fossil shakers ... by next week
* <s>Eric ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
* Eric ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
* Eric ... order some boric acid and test it out ... </s>
== WWWs ==
* Brandon ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
* Brandon ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
* Eric... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
* Eric ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
* Eric ... Send recipe for galaxy plate to everyone ... by tonight
* Eric ... Write community garden sponsership proposal ... by next call
* Eric ... Spend some time creating pages on call subjects ... by next call
* Ben ... follow your topical community protocol for this week ... ongoing
* Ben ... meditate and keep track of which days ... ongoing
* Ben ... check with the Sanders about revised meeting times ... by tonight
* Ben ... do a draft proposal about Children International ... by next call
== Weekly Events Logistics ==
Service rotation: Eric, Shelley, Brandon, Ben
* November 2 Service: tentatively 8:45 am PDT (11:45 EDT) (Ben) Last week of Viventibus Mundos
* November 9 Service: 9:00 am PDT (12:00 EDT) (Eric) First week of Viventibus Galaxia
* November 3 Work-Bee: tentatively 4:30 pm PDT (19:30 EDT) (Ben will be returning from Bioneers about then)
* November 17 Seeing Nature Readings and Practices (Ottawa): 13:00 EST
== Children International ==
* A charity that gives you some contact with the people you're helping ("your chance to build a lifelong friendship with an impoverished child")
** For $25 per month, you become a sponsor for a single child
* Eric has heard of a religious group that does something similar, but drops support for any child who becomes pregnant because she's a "sinner"
** Children International doesn't appear to be religious, but Eric thinks the group he's thinking of hides their religious nature to some degree
== Spiritual Experience Experiments ==
* List of ideas for experiences: [[Direct experiences that lead to religiousness]]
* What would the experiments look like?
** Eric: Is the experience of watching a movie that supports the upward spiral distinguishable from that of watching one that supports the downward spiral ("filled with orange explosions that teach us to cheer for death")?
*** ''Avatar" does both
*** The value judgments involved lead to a temptation to twist the data toward what we want it to say
*** Ideally we'd have randomly chosen research subjects who don't know which group they're in
** Ben: How do we handle the subjectivity of the data? Is there a baseline we can reliably measure against?
*** Eric: Break up the problem into smaller chunks, e.g. compare movies about revenge with movies about building a relationship
*** Ben: Each participant would probably have to watch both types of movie
* Questionnaire design
** Ben: Degree of epiphany or life-changingness seems difficult to ask about in a coherent, scientifically valid way
** Eric: Ask about it 6 different ways and use a 5-point rating scale (Eric read about this technique in a literature review paper)
** Eric: We should do a literature review ourselves (which might require money for accessing the relevant articles, although we could use Patrick's university account)
== Evaluation ==
* Ben ... Its 11:38 and I feel we have made good progress ... I would like to thank Eric for discussing the topics that I wanted to discuss. Ouch Petra quit digging your claws into my leg.
* Petra Meow but I like the feel of my claws in your flesh. I just want to hold on to you because I love you so much.
* Eric ... This was a good call ... we covered a couple of topics that we've put off for way too long ... I'm going to go harvest potatoes now