This collection of quotes is being compiled by Lo Snöfall

24 December 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/science/07brain.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all
Unlike the cryptic social and professional mazes of real life, puzzles are reassuringly soluble; but like any serious problem, they require more than mere intellect to crack. “It’s imagination, it’s inference, it’s guessing; and much of it is happening subconsciously,” said Marcel Danesi, a professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto. "It’s all about you, using your own mind, without any method or schema, to restore order from chaos”
The creative leap may well be informed by subconscious cues. In another well-known experiment, psychologists challenged people to tie together two cords; the cords hung from the ceiling of a large room, too far apart to be grabbed at the same time.
A small percentage of people solved it without any help, by tying something like a pair of pliers to one cord and swinging it like a pendulum so that it could be caught while they held the other cord. In some experiments researchers gave hints to those who were stumped — for instance, by bumping into one of the strings so that it swung. Many of those who then solved the problem said they had no recollection of the hint, though it very likely registered subconsciously.
Those whose brains show a particular signature of preparatory activity, one that is strongly correlated with positive moods, turn out to be more likely to solve the puzzles with sudden insight than with trial and error (the clues can be solved either way).
This signature includes strong activation in a brain area called the anterior cingulate cortex. Previous research has found that cells in this area are active when people widen or narrow their attention — say, when they filter out distractions to concentrate on a difficult task, like listening for a voice in a noisy room. In this case of insight puzzle-solving, the brain seems to widen its attention, in effect making itself more open to distraction, to weaker connections.
“At this point we have strong circumstantial evidence that this resting state predicts how you solve problems later on,” Dr. Kounios said, “and that it may in fact vary by individual.”
The idea that a distracted brain can be a more insightful one is still a work in progress.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE1DuBesGYM

http://www.ted.com Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.

18 December 2010

http://opera.stanford.edu/iu/libretti/saul.htm
Now a Diff'rent Measure Try - Shake the Dome - Then At Once from Rage Remove (from Solomon)
Maulbronn Chamber Choir, Maulbronner Kammerchor, Hannoversche Hofkapelle, Hanoverian Court Orchestra
George Frideric Handel
SOLOMON
(1749)
An Oratorio
Words attributed to Newburgh Hamilton
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Solomon (alto)
Solomons's Queen (soprano)
Nicaule, Queen of Sheba (soprano)
First Harlot (soprano)
Second Harlot (mezzo-soprano)
Zadok, the High Priest (tenor)
A Levite (bass)
Attendant (tenor)
Chorus of Priests
Chorus of Israelites
Act 3
46. Solo and Chorus Solomon Israelites
Now a diff'rent measure try,
Shake the dome, and pierce the sky.
Rouse us next to martial deeds;
Clanking arms, and neighing steeds,
Seem in fury to oppose —
Now the hard-fought battle glows.
47. Recitative Solomon
Then at once from rage remove;
Draw the tear from hopeless love;
Lengthen out the solemn air,
Full of death and wild despair.

http://opera.stanford.edu/iu/libretti/judas.htm
Sion Now Her Head Shall Raise - Tune Your Harps (from Judas Maccabaeus)
Juergen Budday, Jurgen Budday, Maulbronn Chamber Choir, Maulbronner Kammerchor, Musica Florea Prague, Catherine King & Sinead Pratschke
George Frideric Handel
JUDAS MACCABAEUS
(1747)
A Sacred Drama
Words by Thomas Morell
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Judas Maccabaeus (tenor)
Simon, his Brother (bass)
Israelitish Woman (soprano)
Israelitish Man (mezzo-soprano)
Eupolemus, the Jewish Ambassador to Rome (alto)
First Messenger (alto)
Second Messenger (bass)
Chorus of Israelites
Chorus of Youths
Chorus of Virgins
Act 2
31.Duet Israelitish Woman and Man
Sion now her head shall raise,
Tune your harps to songs of praise.
32. Chorus Israelites
Sion now her head shall raise,
Tune your harps to songs of praise.

http://opera.stanford.edu/iu/libretti/saul.htm
Already See, the Daughters of the Land - Welcome Mighty King (from Saul)
Juergen Budday, Jurgen Budday, Maulbronn Chamber Choir, Maulbronner Kammerchor, Hannoversche Hofkapelle, Hanoverian Court Orchestra & Nancy Argenta
SAUL
(1739)
An Oratorio; or Sacred Drama
Words by Charles Jennens
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Saul (bass)
Merab (soprano)
Michal (soprano)
Jonathan (tenor)
David (alto)
Samuel (bass)
High Priest (tenor)
Witch of Endor (tenor)
Abner (tenor)
Amalekite (tenor)
Doeg (bass)
Chorus of Israelites
Chorus
Act 1 
21. Recitative Michal
Already see the daughters of the land,
In joyful dance, with instruments of music,
Come to congratulate your victory.
Scene 3 Saul, Michal, Chorus.
22. Chorus of Israelites
Welcome, welcome, mighty king!
Welcome all who conquest bring!
Welcome David, warlike boy,
Author of our present joy!
Saul, who hast thy thousands slain,
Welcome to thy friends again!
David his ten thousands slew,
Ten thousand praises are his due!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Es_ist_ein_Ros_entsprungen
Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, most commonly translated to English as Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming or A Spotless Rose, is a Christmas carol and Marian Hymn of German origin. The text is thought to be penned by an anonymous author, and the piece first appeared in print in the late-16th century. The hymn has been used by both Catholics and Protestants, with the focus of the song being Mary or Jesus, respectively.[1] In addition, there have been numerous versions of the hymn, with varying texts and lengths.
The tune most familiar today appears in the Speyer Hymnal (printed in Cologne in 1599), and the familiar harmonization was written by German composer Michael Praetorius in 1609.[1] The tune was used by Johannes Brahms as the basis for a chorale fantasy for organ, later transcribed for orchestra by Erich Leinsdorf, and by Hugo Distler as the basis for his 1933 oratorio Weihnachtsgeschichte ("Christmas story").
The English translation "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" was written by Theodore Baker in 1894.[2] 
Another Christmas hymn, "A Great and Mighty Wonder," is set to the same tune as this carol and may sometimes be confused with it. It is, however, a hymn by St. Germanus, 734 (Μέγα χαί παράδοξον θαυμα), translated from Greek to English by John M. Neale, 1862.
http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/g/r/greatami.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash,_Jr.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrAc5CVw2zQ&feature=related
Although he took prescribed medication, Nash wrote later that he only took it under pressure. After 1970 he was never committed to the hospital again and refused any medication. According to Nash, the film A Beautiful Mind inaccurately showed him taking new atypical antipsychotics during this period. He attributed the depiction to the screenwriter (whose mother, he notes, was a psychiatrist), who was worried about encouraging people with the disorder to stop taking their medication.[12] Others[who?], however, have questioned whether the fabrication obscured a key question as to whether recovery from problems like Nash's can actually be hindered by such drugs,[13] and Nash has said they are overrated and that the adverse effects are not given enough consideration once someone is considered mentally ill.[14][15][16] According to Sylvia Nasar, author of the book A Beautiful Mind, on which the movie was based, Nash recovered gradually with the passage of time. Encouraged by his then former wife, de Lardé, Nash worked in a communitarian setting where his eccentricities were accepted. De Lardé said of Nash, "it's just a question of living a quiet life".[17]
Nash dates the start of what he terms "mental disturbances" to the early months of 1959 when his wife was pregnant. He has described a process of change "from scientific rationality of thinking into the delusional thinking characteristic of persons who are psychiatrically diagnosed as 'schizophrenic' or 'paranoid schizophrenic'"[18] including seeing himself as a messenger or having a special function in some way, and with supporters and opponents and hidden schemers, and a feeling of being persecuted, and looking for signs representing divine revelation.[19] Nash has suggested his delusional thinking was related to his unhappiness, and his striving to feel important and be recognized, and to his characteristic way of thinking such that "I wouldn't have had good scientific ideas if I had thought more normally." He has said, "If I felt completely pressureless I don't think I would have gone in this pattern".[20] He does not see a categorical distinction between terms such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.[21] Nash reports that he did not hear voices until around 1964, later engaging in a process of rejecting them.[22] Nash reports that he was always taken to hospitals against his will, and only temporarily renounced his "dream-like delusional hypotheses" after being in a hospital long enough to decide to superficially conform, behave normally or experience "enforced rationality". Only gradually on his own did he "intellectually reject" some of the "delusionally influenced" and "politically-oriented" thinking as a waste of effort. However, by 1995, he felt that although he was "thinking rationally again in the style that is characteristic of scientists," he felt more limited.[18][23]

16 December 2010

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Noble_Truths
... the Sutra introduces what it calls "the most wonderful / the unsurpassed great Law": In the past at Varanasi/ you turned the wheel of the Law of the Four Noble Truths/ , making distinctions/ preaching that all things are born and become extinct,/ being made up of the five components/ Now you turn the wheel of the most wonderful/ the unsurpassed great Law/.This Law is very profound and abstruse;/ there are few who can believe it/ Since times past often we have heard/ the World-Honored One's preaching,/ but we have never heard/ this kind of profound, wonderful and superior Law./ Since the World-Honored One preaches this Law,/ we all welcome it with joy.
http://www.zhaxizhuoma.net/DHARMA/Tripitaka/LotusSutra/Chapter10.htm
...
Because the Buddhas guard and keep them in mind.
They will be able to bring joy to the great assembly.
If one stays close to the teachers of the Law
he will speedily gain the bodhisattva way.
By following and learning from these teachers
he will see Buddhas as numerous as the Ganges sands.
Nichiren, whose teachings were based on the Lotus Sutra, stated in his letter "Comparison of the Lotus and Other Sutras" that the doctrine of the Four Noble Truths was expounded especially for the Voice-Hearers or Sravaka disciples, while the Lotus Sūtra was taught equally for all.[10]

Here in Lapland we are also fortunate, as Evan was, to sometimes see a snowy owl.
“The Snowy Owl (Bubo scandiacus) is a large owl of the typical owl family Strigidae. The bird is also known in North America as the Arctic Owl, Great White Owl... or Harfang*.
For the Ogala Sioux Indians, the snowy owl represents the North and the north wind.They also were admired and respected by the tribe; in fact, warriors that excelled in combat wore a cap of owl feathers to symbolize their bravery.” Wikipedia
*The name harfang (harfång) is an old Swedish name of the snowy owl. It means ‘the owl who catches hares’.
Some related fiction:
The wizard Harfang Longbottom in H. Potter,
Harfang was the castle of the Gentle Giants of the far north in Narnia.
The king and queen are snowy owls in ‘Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole’.
Here are pictures: http://www.pbase.com/zylen/snowy_owl
Ibland kan en nedskriven essä få läsaren att längta efter en ännu oskriven. I sitt lantliga hem läser Brusewitz en nyårsafton Adolf Törneros vid skenet från ett stearinljus, sedan elektriciteten slagits ut av ett snöoväder. Enligt Brusewitz ansåg denne originelle latinprofessor i det tidiga 1800-talets Uppsala "att man inte kan bedöma nedskrivna tankar och infall utan att veta mot vilket väder de projicerats"
Och i förbifarten kan Brusewitz meddela att fjällugglan på franska heter harfang - ett direkt lån av den gamla svenska ugglebenämningen harfång.
http://runeberg.org/famijour/1871/0008.html
Suzette Sommer:

"Average people everywhere just want to live in peace and prosperity with their families and friends. They have zero urge to war.
Our so-called leaders of politics, society, religion and commerce have let the world down.
My excitement and hope is through the internet and things like FB and youtube and skype.
Never before have we as individuals had such power to increase our personal footprint in such a massive way.
We have transcended time and space.
What will each of us do with this opportunity?
I have made friends around the world, and am especially thankful for a small group of conservative Muslims, mostly Pakistani, and for the in depth, ongoing conversations we are having, learning from and about each other.
I've told them that there are enough Americans for every Pakistani to have two American FB friends.
When enough of us are broadly enough connected, and have genuine conversations, war and bad behavior will be very tough to pull off.
Our leaders will wake up to a push towards peace and a resistance towards war.
We will defend our friends, not let others define them as our enemies.
We will coordinate to create solutions worldwide, as so many people I know are already doing.
We are now able to find each other, anywhere.
Each one of us radiates an influence, varying in extent, but everyone of us has a circle we touch.
What do we bring to our circle, and how do we expand it in meaningful, helpful ways?
So many possibilities, so much opportunity."

15 December 2010

Vindkraftverk målade som totempålar mm samt något som varnar fåglar.
Berättelse om 90(0) människor på en motsvarande 'förminskad' ö med motsvarande förkortat tidsperspektiv.


T E M P E L B E R G E T  19 / 9 2010




http://www.aselebyar.nu/fredrika/index.php?expand=1&menuID=143&pageID=157&submenuID=172&subpageID=164





Kyrkan i Fredrika är en rektangulär långhuskyrka i panelat liggtimmer med valmat mansardtak och ett smalare rakslutet kor. Kyrkan som uppfördes 1796–97 av fyrtio bönder i kapellaget...

http://www.vbm.se/avdelningar/byggnadsvard1/kyrkomiljeer/fredrika1.html

24 / 7 2010  Under gårdagen restes det första tornet i vindkraftparken i Fredrika. Det är Sveriges största pågående vindkraftsbygge som sysselsätter mellan 70 och 100 personer uppe på berget Stor-Rotliden. http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=109&artikel=3806217

14 December 2010

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BAoPqHkP2o
Jamie Lee Curtis (bipolar function)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html
The mitochondrial dysfunction identified in the JAMA study I've been talking about is ultimately only one downstream symptom of many upstream causes. Other researchers have found systemic inflammation,(ix) brain inflammation,(x) gut inflammation,(xi) elevated levels of toxins and metals, gluten and casein antibodies,(xii) nutrient deficiencies including omega-3 fats,(xiii) vitamin D,(xiv) zinc, and magnesium, and collections of metabolic dysfunction related to quirky genes that make it difficult to perform chemical reactions essential for health in the body such as methylation and sulfation.(xv)
The take home message here is that the answer to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders will not be found in one of these factors, but in all of them taken together in varying degrees in each individual. There is no such thing as "autism." Rather there are "autisms" -- different patterns of biological dysfunction unique to each child that result in multiple insults to the brain that all manifest with symptoms we call autism.

http://www.mycrazyhobby.com/stop/
http://www.trafficsign.us/yellowyield.html
The YIELD sign was added to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices in 1954 to assign right of way at intersections where a stop was not normally required. The sign was established as a point-down equilateral triangle with black legend and border on a yellow background. Some agencies also used a "keystone"-shaped YIELD sign, and others added the text "RIGHT OF WAY" in the space below the YIELD legend.
In 1971, the YIELD sign was changed to use the red background you see today, along with the region in the center of the sign.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_sign
In road transport, a YIELD (Canada, Ireland, and the United States) or GIVE WAY (Hong Kong and most Commonwealth countries) traffic sign indicates that a vehicle driver must prepare to stop if necessary to let a driver on another approach proceed (but has no need to stop if their way is clear). A driver who stops has yielded their right of way to another. In contrast, a stop sign always requires a complete stop.
The first yield sign was installed in Tulsa, Oklahoma, having been devised and designed by Tulsan police officer Clinton Riggs.[1] [2][3] Riggs invented only the sign, not the rule, which was already in place.[citation needed] Despite Oklahoma being landlocked, it is sometimes suggested[by whom?] the rule was made by analogy to the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea.[citation needed] The sign as originally conceived by Officer Riggs was shaped like a keystone; later versions bore the shape of an inverted equilateral triangle which has been almost universally adopted. With the pole, the overall shape is that of the "Y" in YIELD, which has been noted mainly by teachers of the English language.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_sign
Stop signs originated in Michigan in 1915.[19] The first ones had black letters on a white background and were 24 by 24 inches (61 × 61 cm), somewhat smaller than the current sign. As stop signs became more widespread, a committee supported by the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) met in 1922 to standardize them, and selected the octagonal shape that has been used in the United States ever since. The unique eight-sided shape of the sign allows drivers facing the back of the sign to identify that oncoming drivers have a stop sign and prevent confusion with other traffic signs. It was also chosen so that it could be identified easily at night, since the original signs were not reflective. The National Conference on Street and Highway Safety (NCSHS), a group competing with AASHTO, advocated a smaller red-on-yellow stop sign.[19] These two organizations eventually merged to form the Joint Committee on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which in 1935 published the first Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices for Streets and Highways (MUTCD) detailing the stop sign's specifications.
The MUTCD stop sign specifications were altered eight times between 1935 and 1971, mostly dealing with its reflectorization and its mounting height. From 1924 to 1954, stop signs were made with a black stop legend on a yellow field. In 1954, the sign gained its current white legend/red field color configuration. Red signifies stop on traffic signals, so this specification unified red as a stop signal whether indicated by sign or by light. The mounting height reached its current level of 7 ft (2.13 m) in 1971;[19] previously, stop signs were typically mounted 2–3 feet (0.61–0.91 m)[vague] above the ground[citation needed].
The already-widespread use of the MUTCD stop sign became law in the United States in 1966.[19] In 1968, this sign was adopted by the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals as part of United Nations Economic Commission for Europe's effort to standardize road travel across borders. The Convention specifies that 'stop' be written in English or the national language and allows an alternative circular yellow sign. Many European countries are party to the Convention. English speaking countries, the exception being India, are not party to the Convention but usually use the red octagonal stop sign per their own standards, like the MUTCD. Even in countries not associated with either standard mentioned above the red octagonal stop sign is often used. Unique types of stop signs may be still be observed in countries like Japan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_sensitive_person
A highly sensitive person (HSP) is a person having the innate trait of high psychological sensitivity (or innate sensitiveness as Carl Jung originally coined it). According to Elaine N. Aron and colleagues as well as other researchers, highly sensitive people, who comprise about a fifth of the population, may process sensory data much more deeply and thoroughly due to a biological difference in their nervous systems.[1] This is a specific trait with key consequences that in the past has often been confused with innate shyness, social anxiety problems, inhibitedness, or even social phobia and innate fearfulness, introversion, and so on.[2] The existence of the trait of innate sensitivity was demonstrated using a test that was shown to have both internal and external validity.[3] Although the term is primarily used to describe humans, the trait is present in nearly all higher animals.
... Faced with this apparent misnaming of a basic survival strategy, Aron and colleagues developed the notion of high sensitivity, expanding on Jung's suggestion of the trait of innate sensitiveness, which he distinguished from his own notion of introversion. In support of this distinction, Aron showed that the Highly Sensitive Person Scale identified a sizable proportion of extroverted sensitive persons (30%). In addition, Aron provides evidence supporting that highly sensitive persons can also be highly sensitive to favourable social cues and respond with traits of extroversion.[9]
Some individuals are more susceptible (or sensitive) to such influences than others, however, not only to negative but also to positive ones. For example, research by Pluess & Belsky [10][11] has shown that children with difficult temperaments in infancy are more susceptible to the effects of parenting and child care quality in the first 5 years of life. Intriguingly, these children not only had more behavioral problems in response to low quality care, they also had the least problems of all children when having a history of high quality care suggesting that children with difficult temperament are highly susceptible rather than difficult and therefore able to benefit significantly more from positive experiences compared to other less susceptible children.
HSP students work differently from others. They pick up on the subtle things, learning better this way than when overaroused. If an HSP student is not contributing much to a discussion, it does not necessarily mean they do not understand or are too shy. HSPs often process things better in their heads, or they may be over-aroused. This can be the reason for their not contributing. HSPs are usually very conscientious but underperform when being watched. This also applies to work situations; HSPs can be great employees—good with details, thoughtful and loyal, but they do tend to work best when conditions are quiet and calm. Because HSPs perform less well when being watched, they may be overlooked for a promotion. HSPs tend to socialize less with others, often preferring to process experiences quietly by themselves.[5][12] 

As explained above, many writers on HSP propose a positive, accepting attitude towards [being an] HSP. However, this is not the general consensus in the professional psychological community. For instance, Jeffrey E. Young, founder of the increasingly applied Schema Therapy, although never having been critical of HSP writers or writings, links high sensitivity, or as he calls it, the "highly empathic temperament" with the Self Sacrifice Schema (Young, 2003, pp. 246–251), which in turn is almost always related to the Emotional Deprivation Schema. In his opinion, these persons (patients) need to learn to focus on themselves instead of others and to learn to get their own needs met, needs they typically are not aware of. As such, HSP can be seen not as a positive personality trait, but as a psychopathological condition that can be treated with experiential, cognitive, behavioral, and limited-reparenting strategies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotypical
Neurotypical (or NT) is a term that was coined in the autistic community as a label for people who are not on the autism spectrum:[1] specifically, neurotypical people have neurological development and states that are consistent with what most people would perceive as normal, particularly with respect to their ability to process linguistic information and social cues.[2] The concept was later adopted by both the neurodiversity movement and the scientific community.[3][4][5]

 

12 December 2010

http://www.farwesteditions.com/default.htm
http://www.farwesteditions.com/mft/mft_15.htm#wolf
Many of us have rediscovered what the ancient spiritual traditions have always known—that there is a mystical reality within ourselves, an unfathomable freedom that our science and our psychology may not comprehend. But we have also discovered that to know about this inner world and to touch it only in the privileged conditions of meditation is not enough. Surely, the next step of the spiritual search in our culture is the capacity to search for this condition concretely in the midst of the life that is common to so many of us in the world today. What do we now understand about this search in life? What difficulties are specific to our present culture? How can we help each other understand our next step? 
from "The Inner Search in Everyday Life"
Excerpts from a conference at the Gurdjieff Foundation in San Francisco.
Our lack of connection to others is inseparable from our lack of connection to the centers of perception within our organism.
In any case, the work asks the pupil to cultivate a new attitude toward difficult relations between people-not immediately trying to resolve these difficulties or explain them or begrudgingly see them as a necessary evil. We need these difficulties for our own awakening-precisely these difficulties with other people.
The conditions of the work community support the difficult (in life it approaches the impossible) voluntary effort to go on struggling with ourselves, even if it just means staying in the same room with someone who is in some way offensive to us. 
I'm going to buy a small piece of land in the country with it. I'll build a log cabin and I'll put in a vegetable garden so I can grow all my own food. I'll live there like that. So I wanted to ask you, would that be a good thing for me to do? Is that a good life?"
"Yes," Mr. Gurdjieff answered, "that good life. For dog. For man, no. You eat, you sleep, live in dream. How could this ever be life for man?"
The Dagara people of Africa consider plants the most intelligent of all earth's creatures because they communicate entirely without speech. Animals rank lower than plants because they sometimes use their voices to convey meaning. Least intelligent of all are human beings because their communication relies so heavily on the spoken word.

11 December 2010


Buddhist celebration summer 2008. Fredrika, Sweden.
This is a short video of buddhist celebration and ceremony at Fredrika, Sweden. This is where the biggest temple in Europe will be built.Situated in a remote area located in the rolling hills of Sweden's southern Lapland and clad in soft snow in the winters, you will find the under-construction Buddhist temple of Fredrika.
Right now one of Sweden's smallest towns is making room for the biggest Buddhist temple in Europe with space for almost as many worshippers as there are villagers.
In this series of over 20 fine photographs we follow the ceremony greeting the statue of Luang Phor Thuad into the nordic community of Fredrika. Luang Phor Thuad is the most revered monk in the history of Thai Buddhism and is comparable to Saint George when it comes to Christian standards.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_intelligence
Elephants are thought to be highly altruistic animals that will even aid other species, including humans, in distress. In India, an elephant was helping locals lift logs by following a truck and placing the logs in pre-dug holes upon instruction from the mahout (elephant trainer). At a certain hole, the elephant refused to lower the log. The mahout came to investigate the hold up and noticed a dog sleeping in the hole. The elephant only lowered the log when the dog was gone.[29]
Cynthia Moss has often seen elephants going out of their way to avoid hurting or killing a human, even when it was difficult for them (such as having to walk backwards to avoid a person).
Joyce Poole documented an encounter told to her by Colin Francombe on Kuki Gallman's Laikipia Ranch. A ranch herder was out on his own with camels when he came across a family of elephants. The matriarch charged at him and knocked him over with her trunk, breaking one of his legs. In the evening, when he didn't return, a search party was sent in a truck to find him. When the party discovered him, he was being guarded by an elephant. The animal charged the truck, so they shot over her and scared her away. The herdsman later told them that when he couldn't stand up, the elephant used her trunk to lift him under the shade of a tree. She guarded him for the day and would gently touch him with her trunk.[19]Elephants are the only other species on Earth other than Homo sapiens sapiens and Neanderthals[31] known to have any recognizable ritual around death. They show a keen interest in the bones of their own kind (even unrelated elephants that have died long ago). They are often seen gently investigating the bones with their trunks and feet, and remaining very quiet. Sometimes elephants that are completely unrelated to the deceased will still visit their graves.[9]

10 December 2010

http://www.sofieprisen.no/Articles/156.html
The question that faces us at the start of a new millennium is how long we can go on talking about rights without simultaneously focusing on the individual's obligations.  Maybe we need a new universal declaration.  Perhaps the time is ripe for a Universal Declaration of Human Obligations.  It is simply no longer meaningful to talk about rights without simultaneously stressing the individual state's, or person's, obligations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jostein_Gaarder

07 December 2010

 http://moroccandesign.com/eight-point-star
The roots of the eight-point star symbol are in early astronomy. The eight lines are symbolic of the four corners of space (north, south, east, and west) and time (two solstices and two equinoxes).
By the middle-ages, the eight-point star is widely used as a symbol in Islamic art. It is called khatim or khatim sulayman, seal of the prophets, as in signet ring. The phrase “seal of the prophets” is also used in the Koran and has particular ideological meaning for Muslims.
Abraham, the shared prophet of the monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) lived in the Sumerian city of Ur. Excavations from Ur reveal early use of the eight point star, often in the form of an eight petal rosette used in jewelry or metalwork decoratation.
The Sumerians used an arrangement of lines as a symbol for both star and God. The linear eight-point star represented the goddess Inanna, Sumerian queen of the heavens and Ishtar (Astarte), the Babylonian goddess known as “The Lightbringer.” An eight-point star enclosed within a circle was the symbol for the sun god. The “Babylonian star-cult is the core and the archetype of subsequent astrology.”How does the pagan symbol for God/star transform itself into an Islamic symbol? What could the connection be between the Islamic use of the eight-point star and its uses as a symbol in Sumerian culture?
The number eight was important among Sufi mystics. “The octagon, with a ninth point in the center, is also central to the mystical symbology of Sufism. It is the seal or design which Ernest Scott says ‘reaches for the innermost secrets of man’. Meaning wholeness, power and perfection, this primary geometrical symbol is one which Sufis associate with Shambhala …”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_calendar
The current Islamic year is 1431 AH, from approximately 18 December 2009 (evening) to 6 December 2010 (evening).
Being a purely lunar calendar, it is not synchronized with the seasons. With an annual drift of 11 or 12 days, the seasonal relation is repeated approximately each 33 Islamic years.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/100723-buckyballs-largest-molecules-space-science/
Buckyballs have since been found in meteorites, Earth rocks, and candle soot. Nanotechnologists have stretched them into strong, light carbon nanotubes used in bike frames and tennis rackets. And now scientists are eyeing the molecules for superconducting materials and drug delivery.
But for decades the pure carbon spheres remained elusive in one of the places they were most expected: space.
The find - a previously unknown form of pure carbon - earned the team a Nobel Prize. (The element's two previously known pure forms are graphite and diamond.)

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/11/19/david-foster-wallace-s-personal-files.html
While many children are capable of conjuring imaginative tales, the grade-school Wallace has an unusual empathy for the adult double-bind of finding purpose in a job that also brings misery. The kettle hopes that a solution (“I come to you for advice”) may be found through the act of writing. All of this, heartbreakingly, is reminiscent of Wallace himself, the MacArthur-winning author of complex but emotionally gripping fictions such as Infinite Jest, who, after a lifetime spent battling depression, committed suicide in 2008.
Along with a complete Gutenberg Bible, some letters of James Joyce’s, and collections of Don DeLillo and Norman Mailer, this tale of a tea kettle in extremis now rests in the University of Texas at Austin’s Harry Ransom Center, as do more than 20,000 of Wallace’s other papers and books. The extended drafts of Jest and his already quite long magazine essays are all present and accounted for in Austin as well. But unlike, say, DeLillo’s papers, there’s next to no personal correspondence in the Wallace archive.
... the unfinished novel The Pale King (set to be published next spring). Less-obvious gems followed, such as Wallace’s teaching materials, and more than 300 heavily annotated books from his personal library.
Wallace’s notes to himself in Tolstoy’s essay “What Is Art?” strip back layers of received critical opinion and show a writer who is eager, above all, to connect. When Tolstoy throws down his decisive thunderbolt against art for aesthetics’ sake—“it is upon this capacity of man to receive another man’s expression of feeling and experience those feelings himself, that the activity of art is based”—Wallace underlines it emphatically, adding “Art as Empathy” in the margin (while the 9-year-old nods, somewhere, inside).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Foster_Wallace Wallace committed suicide by hanging himself on September 12, 2008...
In an interview with The New York Times, Wallace's father reported that Wallace had suffered from depression for more than 20 years and that antidepressant medication had allowed him to be productive.[9] When he experienced severe side effects from the medication, Wallace attempted to wean himself from his primary antidepressant, phenelzine.[10] On his doctor's advice, Wallace stopped taking the medication in June 2007,[9] and the depression returned. Wallace received other treatments, including electroconvulsive therapy. When he returned to phenelzine, he found it had lost its effectiveness.[10] In the months before his death, his depression became severe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwS5pEfcQNk 

04 December 2010

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/03/god-particle/particle-interactive.html
How do fundamental particles acquire mass?



Physicists have high hopes for Europe's giant new atom smasher—they want nothing less than to crack the code of the physical universe.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/geopedia/Atom_Smashers
While protons and neutrons can be broken down into fundamental particles known as quarks and gluons, electrons are themselves fundamental—at least for now. It’s always possible that as physicists deepen their understanding of the universe and wield more powerful technology they will discover an even tinier unit underlying the universe. Fundamental particles make up not only matter but also antimatter (in the form of antiparticles) and the particles that carry forces between other particles (e.g., photons mediate the electromagnetic force; gluons mediate the strong force).
Physicists use particle accelerators not only to find the smallest building blocks of the universe but also to shed light on the biggest questions: What is the universe composed of? What laws govern it? How did it come to be?
String theory tries to unify physics by explaining all particles and forces as vibrations of one-dimensional strings; it also predicts that space has six or seven more dimensions than we know about. Strings are too small for current particle accelerators to detect, but physicists hope to find indirect evidence of their existence, such as superparticles, particles disappearing into other dimensions, or disturbances in the behavior of ordinary particles.
In the mid-1800s James Maxwell realized that electricity and magnetism were not separate phenomena but rather aspects of the same force: electromagnetism. In the 1970s the standard model of physics, which still reigns today, showed that the electromagnetic and weak forces combine to form the electroweak force. There are four fundamental forces of nature: electromagnetic, weak, strong, and gravitational. Many physicists wonder if the strong force and gravity can’t also be combined with the electroweak force to effect a unification of forces. This idea is known as the Grand Unification Theory, or GUT, and physicists hope particle accelerators will help them find evidence of unification.

03 December 2010

Jane Austen’s novels are frequently constructed around mistaken interpretations. In “Emma” the eponymous heroine assumes Mr. Elton’s attentions signal a romantic interest in her friend Harriet, though he is actually intent on marrying Emma. She similarly misinterprets the behavior of Frank Churchill and Mr. Knightly, and misses the true objects of their affections.
Humans can comfortably keep track of three different mental states at a time, Ms. Zunshine said. For example, the proposition “Peter said that Paul believed that Mary liked chocolate” is not too hard to follow. Add a fourth level, though, and it’s suddenly more difficult. And experiments have shown that at the fifth level understanding drops off by 60 percent, Ms. Zunshine said. Modernist authors like Virginia Woolf are especially challenging because she asks readers to keep up with six different mental states, or what the scholars call levels of intentionality.
Above all, these changes would require looking with fresh eyes on the landscape of academic disciplines, and noticing something surprising: The great wall dividing the two cultures of the sciences and humanities has no substance. We can walk right through it.
If we literary scholars can summon the courage and humility to do so, the potential benefits will reverberate far beyond our field. We can generate more reliable and durable knowledge about art and culture. We can reawaken a long-dormant spirit of intellectual adventure. We can help spur a process whereby not just literature, but the larger field of the humanities recover some of the intellectual momentum and "market share" they have lost to the sciences. And we can rejoin the oldest, and still the premier, quest of all the disciplines: to better understand human nature and its place in the universe.
It's a good time to be a literary scholar after all.
Gottschall’s essay confronts
this problem head-on in an eloquent explication
of “quantifying the not easily quantifiable” that
precedes his report of a test of claims that
European fairy tales reflect arbitrary gender
norms of western patriarchal societies. He and
his student-researchers coded 1440 fairy tales
from around the world for explicit and implicit
assumptions about the sexual characteristics of
protagonists and antagonists, heroes and villains,
males and females. Putting to rest (they
hope) the impressionistic underpinnings of the
gender wars, they found that in tales from societies
ranging from the most insular bands and
tribes to the most industrialized states, men and
women were sexually characterized pretty
much as they are in the West.
Will the evolutionary insights about the arts
provided in The Literary Animal raise the consciousness
of Menand, Smith, and colleagues
and finally bring the science wars to an overdue
end? Check back at the MLA’s annual convention
around 2010 for the latest developments.
John Whitfield "Textual Selection," Nature (2006):
By borrowing the scientific method, says
Gottschall, literary scholars can work out what
a story is ‘really’ about, not in some ultimate,
metaphysical sense, but in the sense of whether
a wide range of people interpret a work in the
same way. Such an approach, he says, is needed
if literary scholarship is to create testable,
durable knowledge — and to prevent arguments
being settled solely by who deploys the
sharpest rhetoric and the best memory.
... Gottschall, though, wants to move beyond
literary value — or for that matter, traditional
literary criticism. Literary scholars may adopt
their theories from other branches of knowledge,
but they also push them outwards, using
their theoretical frameworks to analyse philosophy,
science, history and gender politics, for
example. Ultimately, the theories of human
nature that become widely held in a society
will influence how that society believes people
respond to their environments, and how they
should be treated. “Literary scholars aren’t
harmless,” Gottschall says. “When we get it
wrong it matters.” ■

02 December 2010

Anxiety is a generalized mood condition that can often occur without an identifiable triggering stimulus. As such, it is distinguished from fear, which is an emotional response to a perceived threat. Additionally, fear is related to the specific behaviors of escape and avoidance, whereas anxiety is related to situations perceived as uncontrollable or unavoidable.[5]
Anxiety does not only consist of physical effects; there are many emotional ones as well. They include "feelings of apprehension or dread, trouble concentrating, feeling tense or jumpy, anticipating the worst, irritability, restlessness, watching (and waiting) for signs (and occurrences) of danger, and, feeling like your mind's gone blank"[7] as well as "nightmares/bad dreams, obsessions about sensations, deja vu, a trapped in your mind feeling, and feeling like everything is scary."[8] 
Neural circuitry involving the amygdala and hippocampus is thought to underlie anxiety.[11]
The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, in The Concept of Anxiety, described anxiety or dread associated with the "dizziness of freedom" and suggested the possibility for positive resolution of anxiety through the self-conscious exercise of responsibility and choosing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anxiety 
The Yale University-led study used the Keck telescope in Hawaii.
It found that galaxies older than ours contain 20 times more red dwarf stars than more recent ones.
Red dwarfs are smaller and dimmer than our own Sun; it is only recently that telescopes have been powerful enough to detect them.
Red sky at night: The view from a planet in our galaxy (left) but planets in older galaxies are bathed in a rosy glow from the many red stars in the night sky (artist's impression) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11888362

http://www.olofssonsbageri.se/historia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Tfh-TALrZc
Bageriet startades 1947 av bröderna Bengt och Gunnar Olofsson.
Från början bedrevs bageriet i en bagarstuga på Gyljen, och allt gjordes för hand, till och med degarna blandade man med handkraft.
Brödet levererades av bröderna till kunderna med cykel i starten. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/101201-sleep-memories-health-brain-science/?source=link_fb20101201sleepmemories
Previous research had shown that sleep helps people consolidate their memories, fixing them in the brain so we can retrieve them later.  (Read about secrets of why we sleep in National Geographic magazine.)
Rather than preserving scenes in their entirety, the brain apparently restructures scenes to remember only their most emotional and perhaps most important elements while allowing less emotional details to deteriorate.
But the new study, a review based on new studies as well as past research on sleep and memory, suggests that sleep also transforms memories in ways that make them somewhat less accurate but more useful in the long run.
For example, sleep-enabled memories may help people produce insights, draw inferences, and foster abstract thought during waking hours.
But there are dark sides to such selectivity. For instance, the brain can focus on remembering negative experiences at the exclusion of others, which occurs in depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. (Related: "Beyond the Brain" in National Geographic magazine.)
Future research may shed light on what details are remembered and how they're remembered, which could help deal with trauma, Payne noted.
Ink bird Illustration on Recycled Vintage paper
Asheville Artist Gabriel Shaffer

 

01 December 2010

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degrowth
The contemporary degrowth movement can trace its roots back to the anti-industrialist trends of the 19th century, developed in Great Britain by John Ruskin, William Morris and the Arts & Crafts movement (1819–1900), in the United States by Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), and in Russia by Leo Tolstoy (1828–1911).
The concept of "degrowth" proper appeared during the 1970s, proposed by the Club of Rome think tank and intellectuals such as Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Jean Baudrillard, André Gorz, Edward Goldsmith and Ivan Illich, whose ideas reflect those of earlier thinkers, such as the economist E. J. Mishan,[13], the industrial historian Tom Rolt[14], and the radical socialist Tony Turner. The writings of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi also contain similar philosophies, particularly regarding his support of voluntary simplicity.
More generally, degrowth movements draw on the values of humanism, enlightenment, anthropology and human rights.
http://www.degrowth.net/

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/30/noam_chomsky_wikileaks_cables_reveal_profound
In a national broadcast exclusive interview, we speak with world-renowned political dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky about the release of more than 250,000 secret U.S. State Department cables by WikiLeaks. In 1971, Chomsky helped government whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg release the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret internal U.S. account of the Vietnam War. Commenting on the revelations that several Arab leaders are urging the United States to attack Iran, Chomsky says, "latest polls show] Arab opinion holds that the major threat in the region is Israel, that’s 80 percent; the second threat is the United States, that’s 77 percent. Iran is listed as a threat by 10 percent," Chomsky says. "This may not be reported in the newspapers, but it’s certainly familiar to the Israeli and U.S. governments and the ambassadors. What this reveals is the profound hatred for democracy on the part of our political leadership."
NOAM CHOMSKY: What the United States should do is very simple: it should join the world. I mean, there are negotiations going on, supposedly. As they are presented here, the standard picture is that the U.S. is an honest broker trying to bring together two recalcitrant opponents- Israel and Palestinian Authority. That’s just a charade.
If there were serious negotiations, they would be organized by some neutral party and the U.S. and Israel would be on one side and the world would be on the other side. And that is not an exaggeration. It should not be a secret that there has long been an overwhelming international consensus on a diplomatic, political solution. Everyone knows the basic outlines; some of the details you can argue about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
For an industry, planned obsolescence stimulates demand by encouraging purchasers to buy sooner if they still want a functioning product. Built-in obsolescence is used in many different products, from vehicles to light bulbs, from buildings to proprietary software. There is, however, the potential backlash of consumers who learn that the manufacturer invested money to make the product obsolete faster; such consumers might turn to a producer (if any exists) that offers a more durable alternative.
Planned obsolescence was first developed in the 1920s and 1930s when mass production had opened every minute aspect of the production process to exacting analysis.
... By his definition, planned obsolescence was "Instilling in the buyer the desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary."[3]
The term was quickly taken up by others, but Stevenson's definition was challenged. By the late 1950s, planned obsolescence had become a commonly-used term for products designed to break easily or to quickly go out of style. In fact, the concept was so widely recognized that in 1959 Volkswagen mocked it in a now-legendary advertising campaign. While acknowledging the widespread use of planned obsolescence among automobile manufacturers, Volkswagen pitched itself as an alternative. "We do not believe in planned obsolescence," the ads suggested. "We don't change a car for the sake of change."[4]
In 1960, cultural critic Vance Packard published The Waste Makers, promoted as an exposé of "the systematic attempt of business to make us wasteful, debt-ridden, permanently discontented individuals."[5]
Packard divided planned obsolescence into two sub categories: obsolescence of desirability and obsolescence of function. "Obsolescence of desirability", also called "psychological obsolescence", referred to marketers' attempts to wear out a product in the owner's mind. Packard quoted industrial designer George Nelson, who wrote: "Design... is an attempt to make a contribution through change. When no contribution is made or can be made, the only process available for giving the illusion of change is 'styling!'"[5]
In some cases, notification may be combined with the deliberate disabling of a product to prevent it from working, thus requiring the buyer to purchase a replacement. Inkjet printer manufacturers who employ proprietary smart chips in their ink cartridges to prevent them from being used after a certain threshold (number of pages, time, etc.), even though the cartridge may still contain usable ink or could be refilled.
http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/public/wsj-planned-obsolescence.html 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-AwVFmMSaU 
"The Man in the White Suit" Alec Guinness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light 

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