I used to feel so alone in the city.
All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside.
Because how do you meet a new person?
I was very stumped by this for many years.
And then I realized, you just say, “hi.” they may ignore you.
Or you may marry them.
And that possibility is worth that one word.
-Augusten Burroughs
1 week of never ending Sun near the poles
“First you pee in all their mouths”
A site I’ve been working on with a partner:
http://www.slohappyhours.com
http://slohappyhours.com
I always experienced this! I’m glad someone else took notice.
(Source)Good news, doodlers: What your colleagues consider a distracting, time-wasting habit may actually give you a leg up on them by helping you pay attention.
Asked to remember names they’d heard on a recording, people who doodled while listening had better recall than those who didn’t. This suggests that a slightly distracting secondary task may actually improve concentration during the performance of dull tasks that would otherwise cause a mind to wander.
“People may doodle as a strategy to help themselves concentrate,” said study co-author Jackie Andrade, a University of Plymouth psychologist. “We might not be aware that we’re doing it, but it could be a trick that people develop because it helps them from wandering off into a daydream.”
Andrade’s findings, published Thursday in Applied Cognitive Psychology, are an interesting wrinkle on cognitive load theory: The mind has a limited amount of attention to give and, once occupied, stops processing other stimuli.
Cognitive load is exploited by magicians, whose verbal and physical flourishes distract from sleight-of-hand. It also explains why driving while talking on a hands-free headset is no safer than driving while holding a phone. And it could be the reason why doodling is so much better than daydreaming.
“It takes a large cognitive load to daydream. That has a big impact on the task you’re meant to be doing,” said Andrade. “Doodling takes only a small cognitive load, but it’s just enough to keep your mental resources focused on the main task.”
Andrade’s team asked 40 people to listen to a recording containing the names of people and places. Afterwards the people wrote down the names they could remember.
While listening, half of the test subjects were also required to shade in shapes on a piece of paper. Afterwards, they remembered one-third more names than test subjects who didn’t doodle while listening.
“The exciting thing is that people actually got better while doing two things at once,” said Andrade. “Doodling is not as bad a thing as we might think.”
Citation: “What does doodling do?” By Jackie Andrade. Applied Cognitive Psychology, Vol. 23, No. 3, Feb. 26, 2009.
“I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one’s neighbor – such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps – what more can the heart of a man desire?”
Leo Tolstoy, Family Happiness
We have wrongfully conceived ourselves as bodies possessing souls, whereas just the reverse is true. We are souls empowered to build for ourselves temples—bodies–out of the “dust of the ground.”
There is one lesson that, above all others, I desire to drive home to readers of this book, and that is that the mental, moral and spiritual states are largely controlled by the physical state. To be and remain upon an elevated mental, moral and spiritual plane, and yet be in a depressed physical state requires constant effort. On the other hand, to the physically perfect individual, mental, moral and spiritual attainment is automatic. The physical bankrupt finds it easier to descend mentally, morally and spiritually—it is a struggle not to do so—while the physically perfect person has a fight on his hands to make himself do wrong.
So positive am I that the moral and spiritual states are largely dependent upon the physical state that I am bound to say: those to whom the argument for elevating the moral and spiritual states, through improving the physical state, does not appeal are already far sunk in physical deterioration; and they had better be advised in time to set about putting their physical house in order.
Sun Dec 28, 2008 at 11:07:48 AM PST
Like davidminzer, I’m Jewish and descendant of holocaust survivors. Moreover, I’ve been a Zionist all of my life. I went to a Zionist school, I was active in Zionist youth groups. I’ve always been a fervent supporter of Israel as a refuge for Jews around the world who seek a place to exercise their traditions and embrace their identity in peace.
I sang the Israeli anthem in the train rails of Aushwitz-Birkenau and I pledged to fight every day of my life to make sure the savage crimes that had taken place there would never happen again. Every year I pledged: Never Again. Remember and Never forget.
Well, I haven’t forgotten. And so to honor that pledge, to honor the memory of my family members who died in those death camps and because “there comes a time when silence is betrayal”, today I finally and publicly end my support for the state of Israel.
I do this with great pain in my heart, but nonetheless with the overwhelming conviction that it is the only right thing to do. I was patient: I tolerated the destruction of the Oslo process by refusing to end or slow down the constant and criminal construction of settlements. I held my nose and stood my ground when Barak killed the final status negotiations at Taba 2001. I even remained loyal after Sharon’s massacres in the West Bank, the brutal Annexation wall, the illegal “selective assassinations” and Olmert’s war crimes in Lebanon.
I had to defend Israel and Israelis with my friends and others who demanded I be consistent with my progressive views and oppose a country that was responsible for horrible crimes against innocent human beings. “Israelis are scared, they are traumatized, you have to understand…”, “Israel is responding to attacks on itself, tell me one other country that wouldn’t respond when attacked…”, I demanded understanding, I pleaded for a fair and comparative analysis.
ENOUGH. I’m done justifying crimes against humanity by a country that claims to be an illuminated western democracy. I’m done defending a country that is unwilling to grant self-determination to a neighboring people because it won’t let go of a few settlements and divide a city. I’m done tolerating the slaughtering of innocent kids, the murderous and barbaric occupation of an impoverished people, the utter disregard for human life.
Fuck them.
If they think their daily peace of mind is worth the lives of hundreds of innocent people, Fuck them.
If they think the best way to go right now would be to vote for Natanyahu (who is so far winning in the polls), Fuck them.
If they won’t bat an eye before keeping millions without electricity or water, before bombing civilian neighborhoods at exactly the time when kids are leaving schools, before breaking every standard of international law or moral decency, Fuck them.
It’s time for every true progressive in this country and around the world to do the only thing that our consciences should allow us to do, the only thing that can keep us consistent with our supposed beliefs that human life is precious and that unnecessary violence is always criminal, barbarous and unacceptable. We must demand that Israel stop violence and immediately put an end to its colonialist military occupation of Palestine.
And until they do so, we must organize and do everything we can to make sure our money is not financing mass murder and oppression.
It is time for the progressive movement to demand immediate Divestment from Israel, just like we divested from other oppressive states like South Africa.
The only reason not to do so is willful hypocrisy.
And I don’t know about you, but I’m done being a hypocrite.
Unnecessary murder of innocents is always wrong.
Selfish and unjustifiable occupation is always wrong.
Inaction in the face of massive suffering and injustice is always wrong.
It is thus our responsibility to make sure Obama and the rest of our leaders understand that this time we will be relentless, this time we mean business and this time we will honor our pledges.
NEVER AGAIN!
DIVEST NOW!
Peace
Salaam
Shalom
The failure to connect the dots, dismissal of warnings as unfounded, declarations of unexpected calamity, calls for urgent action by government to prevent greater disaster, insistence that Congress and the Administration must act immediately, frightening secret briefings by those who claim to know what has led to the emergency and what must be done to handle it, public assurances that while the nation is in jeopardy wise heads have a plan for protection, with continuing risk to be borne by all Americans, those responsible for a solution to be trusted in the future even though they failed in their responsiblities to prevent the crisis, and don’t waste time questioning who was responsible for the failure now is the time to plan for the future.
That the problem is due to the US dropping its guard, being complacent about its superiority, not recognizing threats different from those well-known in political and military terms. And failing to see that a national threat has come from a source that no sensible person could have foreseen, sure a few gloom and doomers raised alarms about incomprehensible financial dealings, but who could believe those obsessed with imaginary hazards to the financial market.
Financial power has shifted from the US to Asia and the Middle East, some say, and who knows, maybe that was the plan — to outfox the US masters of the financial universe who believed that nobody better knew global economics, and no nation could challenge military protection of the US economy.
Since 9/11 the second 9/11 was predicted to happen in a way that could not be anticipated, that its success would depend on bypassing defenses derived from the first 9/11. Not nuclear, biological or chemical, but financial. Why target a few thousands when millions can be harmed using the institutions and technologies invented for global commerce supremacy — hi-jacked airliners a mere test run.
The confused rush to handle the financial crisis with piecemeal reactions developed over a couple of weeks is likely to have been anticipated by attackers to panic their targets while continuing to withdraw funds from US institutions, picking them off one by one, assured that no military countermeasure is possible so long as targets cannot be identified in time to halt the aggression.
Or is there an armageddon military spasm in the offing of wounded warriors unable to pinpoint targets so goes for all in the database with the full panoply of the revolution in military affairs.
(Source: cryptome.org)