/////////////JOY OF LESS
/////////////In the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied.
///////////////STV LNS-PRNTS 75-BTH DYING OF CA-ANT DD
SMLR AGE TO OWN PRNTS
//////////////////right-size” my lifestyle.
///////////////////If you’re the kind of person who prefers freedom to security, who feels more comfortable in a small room than a large one and who finds that happiness comes from matching your wants to your needs, then running to stand still isn’t where your joy lies.
/////////////////PICO IYER=ut none of that has anything to do with the fact underneath all this: that I — and most readers of this paper — are among the lucky few able to see the global neighborhood, and try to make sense of it, to meet our planetary neighbors, as my grandparents could barely have dreamed of doing. The unfriendliest skies in the world are better than no skies at all.
/////////////FEMINISM-BITTER OR HAPPY
//////////////Walking Off Extra Pounds
Everyday Health member dbldee47 recently started walking for exercise. She writes, "Because it is convenient, I am consistent with my exercise and after only a week, I feel so good that I've begun challenging myself to walk more difficult routes (steeper hills, increasing distance)."
/////////////////1/2 OF A YELLOW SUN-WBC
/////////////Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel Half of a Yellow Sun takes place in Nigeria during the Nigerian-Biafran War in 1967-1970. The effect of the war is shown through the dynamic relationships of five people’s lives ranging from high ranking political figures, a professor, a British citizen, and a houseboy. After the British left Nigeria and stopped ruling, conflicts arose over what government would rule over the land. The land split and the Nigeria-Biafra war started. The lives of the main characters drastically changed and were torn apart by the war and decisions in their personal life.
#'''''//////////////DTWLK=So is less really best when it comes to how many calories we eat? One might think that reducing calories is the most direct way to manage weight. However, this can backfire, especially with eating less than 1200 calories per day (or higher in some individuals). When one cuts their calories down too low the body's metabolism (the rate at which we burn calories) can become compromised and slow down. This happens as the body senses starvation and switches into conservation mode, burning fewer calories so that the available calories go to vital body organs. As a result of a slower metabolism the body can't burn calories as efficiently which can slow down and/or prevent weight loss. Does this sound familiar? Many diets actually result in deprivation gone-too-far and slow the metabolism.
The solution in this case is to eat more (and ditch the diet)! By gradually increasing your calorie level with healthful food choices and eating at regular intervals you will be optimizing your metabolism.
/////////////// today is Great Barrier Reef Discovery Day? In 1770,
Captain James Cook discovered the Great Barrier Reef off the
coast of Australia when his ship, the Endeavour, ran aground
upon it. Trivia buffs: The Great Barrier Reef can be seen from
outer space and is the world's biggest single structure made
by living organisms.
//////////////////SD=The Black Swan and Your Emergency Fund
The basic premise of The Black Swan seems like common sense: life is full of unexpected events. Big ones (like, say, 9/11), medium sized ones (like, say, a career shift), and small ones (like, say, your daughter wetting her pants just before you’re about to leave on an errand).
The Black Swan argues that our minds use a lot of tricks to hide these so-called “black swans” (his term for largely unpredictable and rare events) from us. We need to see the future as at least somewhat predictable, or else we wouldn’t bother making many plans at all. So, when we reflect on our past, it seems much more orderly than it actually was. Also, when we think about the future, we imagine something much more orderly than what will happen.
This idea makes a lot of intuitive sense to me. I know that quite often, when I think about the past, it does seem like an orderly progression of things. However, when I look at old diary entries and old videos, I see that there were actually a lot of “black swans” floating around. I didn’t see The Simple Dollar’s success coming at all, for one. When I went to college, I didn’t see myself working for a slightly eccentric German fellow who would basically set up my first career for me and also taught me how to pack effectively for business travel - he was a black swan.
Given that, I think there are a lot of things one can do in their own life that will prepare oneself for the arrivals of black swans of all magnitude.
Learn a wide variety of skills. I don’t just mean transferable skills, either. Know how to make things. Know how to build things. These skills will come in handy over and over again, often in unexpected ways.
Live frugally. I believe that’s one of the underlying messages here - frugality is a great economic and personal advantage. Knowing how to always maximize one’s resources makes one much more able to survive great changes in life - and also gives the person the ability to build up resources (as mentioned below).
Minimize your future costs. If you can use your money now to invest in things that will reduce your costs in the future, do it. The fewer resources required in the future to maintain your way of life means that fewer “black swans” can disrupt you.
Have a large, stable emergency fund. Having a large amount of cash reserves makes it possible for you to ride right through any small and medium-sized “black swans.” Your car unexpectedly dies? Not a problem. A career opportunity comes up? You can jump at it. You lose your job? Not the end of the world.
Have a good “opportunity” fund, too. Sometimes the unexpected comes along and it requires you to have resources. For example, there’s a large chunk of land near our house for sale. If it suddenly makes a nice drop in price, I’ll jump on it. If I happen to see the owner sometime soon, I may negotiate. It’s been up for sale for quite a while, so something nice may happen soon - not quite a black swan, but a good example. A real “black swan” might be that a neighbor is in a pinch and puts a sign on his car that says “$5,000 or best offer” and you can walk over there with $3,000 in cash, snipe it, then resell it for $5,000 with some footwork.
In short, keep some resources at hand, make yourself more useful, and minimize what you’ll need in the future.
/////////////////MKK-WNTNG TO CRY-WTC
//////////////////JUPITER COULD CAUSE PLANETARY CHAOS
The gravity of Jupiter could one day pull Mercury off course triggering a chain reaction of collisions in the Solar System, say experts.
/////////////////
The common curse of mankind,—folly and ignorance. -Troilus and Cressida. Act ii. Sc. 3.
~William Shakespeare~
//////////////////Conditioned Hypereater?
Dr. David Kessler suggests that millions of people worldwide are afflicted by “conditioned hypereating,” an intrinsic drive to eat high-fat, high-sugar foods that’s been exploited by the corporate food industry.
//////////////////DTWLK=Naturally thin people, on the other hand, recognize slight to moderate hunger for what it is — an uncomfortable sensation that will neither last nor do any permanent damage. They intuitively understand that we're not in a famine and that food is generally a quick walk or car ride away. They know they won't die of hunger, because they learned in high school biology that people can live for days without food. Because of their non-alarmist attitude, they're often able to ignore their hunger till food is available.
My advice to overweight people who are never hungry is to actually let yourself experience hunger once in a while. Doing so will help you to deal with it the way naturally thin people do.
///////////////////SRT TRIAGE=Chapter XVIII: The Yoga of Liberation by Renunciation
XVIII.26. MUKTASANGO'NAHAMVAADI DHRITYUTSAAHASAMANVITAH;
SIDDHYASIDDHYOR NIRVIKAARAH KARTAA SAATTWIKA UCHYATE.
(Krishna speaking to Arjuna)
He who is free from attachment, non-egoistic, endowed with
firmness and enthusiasm and unaffected by success or failure, is
called Sattwic.
XVIII.27. RAAGEE KARMAPHALAPREPSUR LUBDHO HIMSAATMAKO'SHUCHIH;
HARSHASHOKAANVITAH KARTAA RAAJASAH PARIKEERTITAH.
Passionate, desiring to obtain the rewards of actions, cruel,
greedy, impure, moved by joy and sorrow, such an agent is said to
be Rajasic.
XVIII.28. AYUKTAH PRAAKRITAH STABDHAH SHATHO NAISHKRITIKO'LASAH;
VISHAADEE DEERGHASOOTREE CHA KARTAA TAAMASA UCHYATE.
Unsteady, dejected, unbending, cheating, malicious, vulgar, lazy
and proscrastinating-such an agent is called Tamasic.
/////////////////Did population density create modern humans?
by Kate Melville
A controversial new study in the journal Science argues that increasing population density, rather than growth in the power of the human brain, is what catalyzed the emergence of modern human behavior. The University College London (UCL) scientists behind the study say that high population density leads to greater exchange of ideas and skills and prevents the loss of new innovations. It is this skill maintenance, they contend, combined with a greater probability of useful innovations, which led to modern human behavior appearing at different times in different parts of the world.
In the study, the UCL team found that complex skills learnt across generations can only be maintained when there is a critical level of interaction between people. Using computer simulations of social learning, they showed that high and low-skilled groups could coexist over long periods of time and that the degree of skill they maintained depended on local population density or the degree of migration between them.
//////////////////The day pain died
What really happened during the most famous moment in Boston medicine
The great moment in the Ether Dome when William Morton administered anesthesia to patient Gilbert Abbott on Oct. 16, 1846.
By Mike Jay
June 7, 2009
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The date of the first operation under anesthetic, Oct. 16, 1846, ranks among the most iconic in the history of medicine. It was the moment when Boston, and indeed the United States, first emerged as a world-class center of medical innovation. The room at the heart of Massachusetts General Hospital where the operation took place has been known ever since as the Ether Dome, and the word "anesthesia" itself was coined by the Boston physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes to denote the strange new state of suspended consciousness that the city's physicians had witnessed. The news from Boston swept around the world, and it was recognized within weeks as a moment that had changed medicine forever.
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COMMENTS (4)
But what precisely was invented that day? Not a chemical - the mysterious substance used by William Morton, the local dentist who performed the procedure, turned out to be simply ether, a volatile solvent that had been in common use for decades. And not the idea of anesthesia - ether, and the anesthetic gas nitrous oxide, had both been thoroughly inhaled and explored. As far back as 1525, the Renaissance physician Paracelsus had recorded that it made chickens "fall asleep, but wake up again after some time without any bad effect," and that it "extinguishes pain" for the duration.
What the great moment in the Ether Dome really marked was something less tangible but far more significant: a huge cultural shift in the idea of pain. Operating under anesthetic would transform medicine, dramatically expanding the scope of what doctors were able to accomplish. What needed to change first wasn't the technology - that was long since established - but medicine's readiness to use it.
Before 1846, the vast majority of religious and medical opinion held that pain was inseparable from sensation in general, and thus from life itself. Though the idea of pain as necessary may seem primitive and brutal to us today, it lingers in certain corners of healthcare, such as obstetrics and childbirth, where epidurals and caesarean sections still carry the taint of moral opprobrium. In the early 19th century, doctors interested in the pain-relieving properties of ether and nitrous oxide were characterized as cranks and profiteers. The case against them was not merely practical, but moral: They were seen as seeking to exploit their patients' base and cowardly instincts. Furthermore, by whipping up the fear of operations, they were frightening others away from surgery and damaging public health.
The "eureka moment" of anesthesia, like the seemingly sudden arrival of many new technologies, was not so much a moment of discovery as a moment of recognition: a tipping point when society decided that old attitudes needed to be overthrown. It was a social revolution as much as a medical one: a crucial breakthrough not only for modern medicine, but for modernity itself. It required not simply new science, but a radical change in how we saw ourselves.Continued...
/////////////////
/////////////////////peak oil=ut our markets might save the day, or something better might come along. One pithy maxim (“the Stone Age ended before we ran out of stone”) captures this sentiment by reminding us that rocks were replaced with something better: metals. And the same story was true with whale oil: Despite concerns in the late 1800s that whaling would cause the extinction of these marvelous marine mammals (“peak whale,” if you will), we ran out of whale oil customers before we ran out of whales because a competitive product — namely, petroleum-derived kerosene — came along that was better than whale oil for illumination.
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