The 10 percent of the brain myth is the widely perpetuated urban myth that most or all humans only make use of 10 percent (or some other small percentage) of their brains. It has been misattributed to many people, including Albert Einstein.[1] By extrapolation, it is suggested that a person may harness this unused potential and increase intelligence.

Changes in grey and white matter following new experiences and learning have been shown, but it has not yet been proven what the changes are.[2] The popular notion that large parts of the brain remain unused, and could subsequently be "activated", rests in popular folklore and not science. Though mysteries regarding brain function remain—e.g. memory, consciousness—the physiology of brain mapping suggests that all areas of the brain have a function.

read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_percent_of_the_brain_myth

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The point here is that most of us can increase our ability to perform better. This is not new. It's just that we need to learn or improve skills as well as being able to discover and acknowledge what is "holding us back" — or why sometimes strong emotional reactivity is triggered by small contrarieties. Often we have willingly constructed these barriers to improvements, and we enjoy them. 

Tod Sampson, for example, is also showing another way to go about "improving" what we do. He does it with the help of specialists in some areas where he is retraining his brain for his body to perform better. 

But we do not have to go as far as climbing Mt Everest unless we wish to. The main part for redesigning my brain which I did in the 1960s was to provide me with the tools of happiness and eliminate old crap such as religious beliefs and erroneous ideas. I was suffering from depression and the only way to deal with this was to use positive anger with myself. It's complicated but to others I'm an obedient pussycat at most time, willingly. The point here as well is that one can make the decision to do something and become skilled at it with a positive attitude but in relation to the limits of our physiological aptitudes — often dependent of age and fitness limits. We can push the boundaries and flap like hell but we cannot fly like birds. 

But we are also dependent, though there is no need to be, to the strong bonds of our cultural heritage. Breaking these bonds are easy for some and impossible for others, because by doing so we might actually create more problem than solve in our relationship with others and our self. 

Going Clear is a documentary about the Church of Scientology that has access to several of the group’s former high profile functionaries - people like Mark Rathbun, the organisation’s one time 2IC, and the Australian Mike Rinder, Scientology’s ex-spokesperson who once defended the organisation with the ferocity of a political head kicker.  Like all Gibney’s films, it relies on the staples of journalistic filmmaking - talking heads and archival footage – but operates with great dynamism and a forceful sense of structure. It also presents some powerful images that leave a lasting impression (seeing the home movie footage of Church founder L Ron Hubbard, who lived before an era of celebrity dentistry or diets, had me thinking how Philip Seymour Hoffman nailed it in Paul Thomas Anderson’s quasi- biopic The Master).

Gibney is a very effective storyteller, and he needs all the skill he can muster to explain Scientology’s intricate belief system, which comes across – hilariously – like a clumsy mix of psychiatry and bad science fiction. You could argue, what religion isn’t like this?but in a way Scientology is especially vulnerable to ridicule by employing bombastic, military-inspired imagery and putting on arena-sized conferences that look like a cross between a hair metal concert and an episode of Battlestar Galactica. The film’s achievement, however, is that it goes beyond the apparent ridiculousness of it all to carefully, methodically lay bare the sophisticated carrot and stick mind control at work in the Church’s operations. Along the way it delivers some fascinating theories on why Hollywood stars like Tom Cruise and John Travolta remain beholden to the group, with film director Paul Haggis, who left Scientology in 2009, a thoughtful on-screen presence in this regard. He seems so intelligent, rational and self-aware. Food for thought indeed.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/finalcut/going-clear/6556242

Albert Einstein developed the theory of relativity and revolutionized our views of time and space, matter and light, gravitation and the universe but said of himself, ""I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious".
Trevor Chappell discussed his life with Diana Buchwald who is a Professor of History at Caltech and Director of the Einstein Papers Project. 

listen: http://www.abc.net.au/overnights/stories/s4256544.htm

When Moscow law firm Family Case, whose website boasts a knack for "the delicate resolution of family problems," decided to advertise recently, it chose a new way to attract new clients: Tittygram.

"Divorce, tits, they're quite close to each other," joked Vladimir Bachurin, a partner at the firm, in a telephone interview Monday, adding that he found Tittygram "amusing."

To send a Tittygram, customers pay $9.95 and a model writes their message — maximum 35 characters — on their breasts, which are never fully shown and have no nipples in sight, and sends it on. The model's face is not visible either.

The site, which launched at the end of March, has proved so popular that staff are working 24 hours a day and 2,000 photos have been sent out already, Tittygram CEO Vladimir Gritsenko told The Moscow Times on Monday in a phone interview from the Volga River city of Ulyanovsk where the company is based.

See more at: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/new-military-equipment-or-saber-rattling-russia-must-choose/news/article/russian-uber-for-boobs-start-up-tittygram-sees-business-boom/519398.html

Taylor Wilson has a Geiger counter watch on his wrist, a sleek, sporty-looking thing that sounds an alert in response to radiation. As we enter his parents’ garage and approach his precious jumble of electrical equipment, it emits an ominous beep. Wilson is in full flow, explaining the old-fashioned control panel in the corner, and ignores it. “This is one of the original atom smashers,” he says with pride. “It would accelerate particles up to, um, 2.5m volts – so kind of up there, for early nuclear physics work.” He pats the knobs.

It was in this garage that, at the age of 14, Wilson built a working nuclear fusion reactor, bringing the temperature of its plasma core to 580mC – 40 times as hot as the core of the sun. This skinny kid from Arkansas, the son of a Coca-Cola bottler and a yoga instructor, experimented for years, painstakingly acquiring materials, instruments and expertise until he was able to join the elite club of scientists who have created a miniature sun on Earth.

Not long after, Wilson won $50,000 at a science fair, for a device that can detect nuclear materials in cargo containers – a counter-terrorism innovation he later showed to a wowed Barack Obama at a White House-sponsored science fair.

Wilson’s two TED talks (Yup, I Built A Nuclear Fusion Reactor and My Radical Plan For Small Nuclear Fission Reactors) have been viewed almost 4m times. A Hollywood biopic is planned, based on an imminent biography. Meanwhile, corporations have wooed him and the government has offered to buy some of his inventions. Former US under-secretary for energy, Kristina Johnson, told his biographer, Tom Clynes: “I would say someone like him comes along maybe once in a generation. He’s not just smart – he’s cool and articulate. I think he may be the most amazing kid I’ve ever met.”

Seven years on from fusing the atom, the gangly teen with a mop of blond hair is now a gangly 21-year-old with a mop of blond hair, who shuttles between his garage-cum-lab in the family’s home in Reno, Nevada, and other more conventional labs. In addition to figuring out how to intercept dirty bombs, he looks at ways of improving cancer treatment and lowering energy prices – while plotting a hi-tech business empire around the patents.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/20/taylor-wilson-nuclear-teen-genius-science-interview

How the Church of Scientology tried to bring down journalist Paulette Cooper, aka Miss Lovely

As a journalist working in New York in the late '60s and early '70s, Paulette Cooper lived a glamorous life.

She was young, beautiful and smart, and she was on the lookout for good stories.

Cooper stumbled into Scientology when a friend joined the church.

"[He] told me he was Jesus Christ and then I went to the person who got him in and I said, 'He thinks he's Jesus Christ now, what's going on?'" she told Lateline.

"This other guy said, 'Well maybe he really is.'

"So I thought you know, maybe this would be something to investigate and that's how I started."

Cooper filed a piece for Queen magazine in London and the harassment started soon after.

"I was in New York at the time and I picked up the phone and got the first of several death threats, and that's how I knew that the article had come out," she said.

That first story led Cooper to gather more information on the church and write a book, the Scandal of Scientology, one of the first critical books on the church.

Cooper had no idea what she was getting herself into.

"They sued me 19 times, all over the world, put me through 50 days of depositions," she said.

She said the church also started sending anonymous smear letters to her neighbours and other people she knew.

"They sent, it was 300 people, they sent a letter saying I was a prostitute with venereal disease and had sexually molested a two-year-old baby girl," she said.

"They sent anonymous letters to my parents, saying I was practising sexual perversions with their clergymen."

Scientology's spies soon found out that Cooper had suffered depression.

"I had seen a psychiatrist, so they robbed the psychiatrist and got my records and sent that to everybody that I knew," she said.

Bomb threat conspiracy

Scientology's founder L Ron Hubbard ordered his followers to attack critics by any means possible.

The Fair Game policy written by Hubbard decreed that enemies of Scientology "may be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed".

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-07-17/how-scientology-tried-to-bring-down-miss-lovely/6627782

Leah Remini has spoken about her dealings with the Church of Scientology and one of its best-known followers, Tom Cruise, in a tell-all television interview in the United States.

The King of Queens actress, who left the church two years ago, has spoken to 20/20 about her experience in the new-age religion in an interview that airs on Friday.

Remini, 45, told the program criticising Cruise was considered an "evil" act within Scientology circles.

To explain her difficult experience both within the church and when attempting to leave, Remini has authored a memoir, Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology, which will be released next month.

"The decision to leave is ... you are giving up everything you've ever worked for your whole life," she told 20/20. 

"I feel that people need to understand that this has been my whole life and I want them to understand how it happens."

Remini, who was once good friends with Cruise as well as other high-ranking Scientology members, described her involvement with the church as socially isolating.

"As time goes on, you start to lose touch with the real world," she said. 

"The mindset becomes 'us' against 'them'."

Born into a Catholic family, Remini joined the Church of Scientology when she was nine, after her mother converted.

She was present when Cruise married ex-wife Katie Holmes in Italy, in 2006.

In July 2013, Remini announced she was leaving the church after three decades.

"I wish to share my sincere and heartfelt appreciation for the overwhelming positive response I have received from the media, my colleagues and from fans," the actress said in a statement.

In a 2013 interview with People given after she announced she was leaving the church, Remini's sister Nicole Remini-Wiskow said she had started to question her involvement after a conversation at Cruise and Holmes' wedding.

According to Remini-Wiskow, her sister had asked why Shelly Miscavage​, the wife of Scientology's leader (and Cruise's groomsman) David Miscavage, was not at the wedding.

Remini was reportedly reprimanded by a church spokesman, and required to undergo "security checks", a term People alleged referred to intensive personal questioning.

Representatives of one of the largest and most notorious religious sects in the world (in fact, a dishonest commercial enterprise, as evidenced by numerous journalistic investigations and findings of commissions of various levels), the Church of Scientology of Moscow, still pursues traditional methods of showing influence on those who dare to criticize the organization. 

A legal representative of Scientologists, Sergei Korzikov, uses such platforms as YouTube to censor news reports about the ruling of the Moscow City Court (upheld by the Supreme Court) about the liquidation of the Church of Scientology in Moscow.

This time, members of the movement paid attention to our publication. Following a complaint from Mr. Korzikov, Pravda.Ru received a warning from YouTube, where the Pravda.Ru video channel carries its video materials. The video about the decision of the Supreme Court to eliminate the religious organization contained only a factual message and did not have any comments in it. However, the video was banned for demonstration due to violation of "copyright."

Question: If an official representative of the liquidated church takes lies and fraudulent information as evidence, how should the society treat such an organization? 

Actually, the society has already made its conclusions about the "work" of representatives of the sect. Criminal actions against critics of the sect imply not only threats, but also murder. Willing to dig for any negative information about the Hubbardist movement, its adherents do not shun the variety of methods of putting pressure on journalists, both legal and psychological ones. The sect's common practice of psycho-terror is projected into real life.

The Russian authorities view the movement of Scientologists as an organization that poses a threat to the national security of our country and represents a real danger to physical and mental health of Russian citizens. Anticipating their agony, the Scientologists have started showing tougher reactions to any criticism against them. -

See more at: http://www.pravdareport.com/society/stories/20-07-2016/135077-church_of_...

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Bavaria's domestic intelligence agency - known as the Verfassungsschutz, or Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution -  has been set to work investigating whether the Church of Scientology has infiltrated one of Munich's most important art galleries.

Okwui Enwezor, director of the Haus der Kunst, which describes itself as one of the world's leading centers for contemporary art, terminated a contract with an external personnel manager earlier this week after a string of complaints about his behavior and ties to the Church of Scientology.

In a letter sent to the gallery's employees, and leaked to the "Süddeutsche Zeitung," Enwezor said that the decision had been made following consultation with legal advisors.

Rumors of the Scientology influence on the gallery had reportedly been accumulating among staff, causing an atmosphere of suspicion that was demoralizing members, the newspaper reported.

Enwezor also called a staff meeting on Thursday to address the issue, taking particular care to invite part-time staff members who had the closest interaction with the dismissed man, who has not been named.

read more:

http://www.dw.com/en/scientologists-infiltrate-munich-art-gallery/a-3780...

Tom Cruise and his daughter Isabella Cruise continue to move up in Scientology, both taking more powerful positions in the secretive church — where the lower ranks are apparently ordered to see the actor’s movies multiple times.

Cruise is said to be “considered a deity within Scientology.” Former church member Leah Remini has said, “He is second to David Miscavige — the savior of the free world.” Cruise was seen March 9 at the front of a celebration of the holiest day of the Scientology calendar — L. Ron Hubbard’s March 13 birthday — at the church’s spiritual mecca in Clearwater, Fla., according to journalist Tony Ortega’s blog the Underground Bunker.

It was just reported that lower-ranking Scientologists are bused out to see Cruise movies, often multiple times, by their leaders, who buy thousands of tickets for his “Mission: Impossible” and “Jack Reacher” franchises to boost the actor’s box office. Ex-Scientologist Bree Mood — who left the church a few months ago — said in an interview: “Tom Cruise was a god in the lower ranks . . . every time a Tom Cruise movie came out they’d buy all his tickets. It could be 500, 1,000, up to 2,500 people. I’m not kidding.”

Now the actor’s adopted daughter with Nicole Kidman, Isabella, 26, has for the first time stepped out publicly for Scientology, as the face of a March 19 recruiting email, in which she extols her experience of completing an “auditing” internship at Scientology London. Auditing is a form of therapy where a low-level person, called a “pre-clear,” holds onto electrodes that direct electricity through the body, moving a needle on a machine called an E-meter that supposedly registers harmful energy related to painful experiences. The auditor — a more senior Scientology member — asks the “pre-clear” questions to help them reach “new realizations about existence.”

Read more:

https://pagesix.com/2019/03/27/scientologists-consider-tom-cruise-to-be-...

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An updated list of “undesirable” organizations was released by the country's Justice Ministry on Friday, just over a week after the Russian Prosecutor General’s office advised a ban for several Church of Scientology affiliates. 

Two California-based holdings, the World Institute of Scientology Enterprises International (WISE) and the Church of Spiritual Technology (CST), also known as the “L. Ron Hubbard Library,” were officially blacklisted.

Both were deemed a threat to Russia’s national security, according to a previous statement from the prosecutor’s office. The inclusion of Scientology on Russia’s list of “undesirable” organizations, which currently number at 49, means the outfit is now prohibited from conducting any activities in Russia, with its local chapters to be forcibly closed and assets frozen.

The decision follows a decades-long campaign to ban Scientology from illegally profiting on Russian territory, with the first major effort to restrict the group dating back to 1996, back in the Boris Yeltsin-era and some twelve years after the organization gained a foothold in what was then the Soviet Union. However, it was not until the 2010s when authorities really cracked down on Scientology groups, investigating major branches in Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as their leaders, on charges of illegal business activities and extremism.

Some of the group’s literature has been outlawed as extremist material, while its Moscow chapter was ordered closed by the Supreme Court in 2016.

The Church of Scientology, which was founded by American science fiction novelist L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s, describes itself as a new religious movement, while its critics believe the group to be either a dangerous cult, a business trying to dodge taxes using religious exemptions, or some combination of both.

While the group has rarely achieved full-blown recognition from state authorities around the world, it has managed to obtain a tax exemption status in a number of countries. At the same time, Russia is far from being the only nation actively obstructing the group’s activities and influence.

A drawn-out case in Belgian against the ‘church’ involved charges of bribery, extortion, fraud, and the unlicensed practice of medicine, but its leaders were acquitted of all charges. Meanwhile in France, Scientology has been classified as a dangerous cult and seven of its members were convicted on various charges, including contribution to suicide. 

Read more: https://www.rt.com/russia/536399-russia-bans-scientology-groups/

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