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Thursday, October 18, 2007
Satire: Nervous University Of South Florida Football Team Kind Of Hoping They Lose
From Onion Sports:
TAMPA, FL—Saying that their No. 2 national ranking is "not something we really want or need at this point," nervous University of South Florida head coach Jim Leavitt told reporters at the team's afternoon practice yesterday that he "more or less was hoping" that his team would lose one or more of their next several games. "Look, our program is barely 10 years old—we're the type of team that goes out there and tries hard, maybe gets a few points on a ranked team here or there. We don't contend for national titles," said a visibly flustered Leavitt, adding that had he known beating Central Florida 64-12 last Saturday would make the Bulls the No. 2 team in the country, he would have fielded his second-string offense in the second quarter. "Leave all this 'win or go home, play for a title every year' nonsense up to the Ohio States or the LSUs. That's not our thing. Maybe a few years from now, but certainly not this year." After realizing that his team matched up quite well with the rest of USF's remaining opponents, Leavitt reportedly contacted the NCAA to discuss downplaying the difficulty of the remainder of the season.Nervous University Of South Florida Football Team Kind Of Hoping They Lose
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Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Gratitude 10/17/07
Some things I am grateful for today:
1) Tomorrow is a light day, and I get to sleep in a bit.
2) At some point in my life, I learned that happiness is not about how much money I have or make, but about the quality of my life. I don't know when or how I learned that, but I am grateful that I did.
3) Good, strong, rich coffee -- nectar of the Gods.
What are grateful for today?
1) Tomorrow is a light day, and I get to sleep in a bit.
2) At some point in my life, I learned that happiness is not about how much money I have or make, but about the quality of my life. I don't know when or how I learned that, but I am grateful that I did.
3) Good, strong, rich coffee -- nectar of the Gods.
What are grateful for today?
Tags:
Speedlinking 10/17/07
Quote of the day:
"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."
~ Virginia Woolf
Image of the day:
BODY
~ Avoiding the two most common lifting injuries -- "There are some very common weight lifting injuries that are often seen among those who aren’t fully aware of what they are doing in the gym. It is important you make yourself aware of these and do your best to avoid them at all costs because if you don’t, you likely will find yourself sidelined with an injury."
~ Leg Training Myths Exposed -- "You know that it's better to go below parallel when squatting or that you don't have to stop half-way when you're leg pressing, but do you know why? Arm yourself with knowledge and bitch-slap that dopey personal trainer."
~ How to Avoid Leaning Forward on Squats -- "A common error on the Squat is to lean forward. Check the picture above for an example of a Squat turning into a Goodmorning. Leaning forward is bad. This article will teach you how to avoid leaning forward on the Squat & why."
~ Soreness After Exercise Not Prevented By Stretching Out -- "Studies show that stretching before or after exercise has little or no effect on muscle soreness between half a day and three days later, a team of Cochrane Researchers has found. Many people stretch before starting to exercise, and some stretch again at the end of a period of exertion. The aim may be to prevent injury, to promote higher performance, or to limit the chances of feeling stiff in the days after the exercise." Stretching after weight training may not reduce soreness, but it will increase flexibility.
~ Study: Eating Soy May Slash Sperm Count -- "Men who eat half a serving of soy a day have drastically fewer sperm."
~ Exercise improves older adults' balance -- "Regular exercise may help older adults stay steady on their feet, potentially cutting their risk of falls and fractures, according to a new research review."
~ Facing Fibromyalgia -- "Find out the latest in treatments for fibromyalgia."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ The Ten Videos to Change How You View the World -- "I believe that a sign of good information is that it makes you think. If reading a book, listening to a lecture or watching a video doesn’t change how you think, it probably isn’t that important. But if you encounter something that forces you to change your views, even if you don’t completely agree with it, you’ve found something valuable." These are all TED Talks, some of which have been posted here.
~ One Tip to Decrease Suffering in Your Life -- "One simple yet powerful thing you can do to remove quite a bit of suffering from your life is to be accepting."
~ How to Be a Friend of Yourself -- "We often focus on building relationships with others that we forget the essential first step: being friends of ourselves. That is the crucial first step if we are to have good relationships with others. How can we have good relationships with others if we don’t even have good relationship with ourselves?"
~ Study Of Sexual Offenders -- "While it is commonly thought that men with low IQs sexually offend because of a lack of knowledge or sexual deviance, new research has found the men may sexually offend because of their exposure to "corrective" sex education previously taken."
~ Relax: They Aren’t Thinking About You! -- "It may be comforting to realize that most people, most of the time, are far too self absorbed to notice any of the myriad ways in which many of us convince ourselves that we are doing something wrong (on a long continuum from something foul and inexcusable, to something less than perfect). But in the long run it is hardly a comforting picture, everyone walking around thinking about what everyone else is thinking about them; in fact it looks like a colossal waste of time and energy."
~ Work and Life: 15 Ways to Strike a Balance -- "Finding work-life balance in today’s crazy-paced world is no simple task. Spend more time at work than at home and you miss out on a rewarding personal life. Then again, if you’re facing challenges in your personal life such as caring for an aging parent or coping with matrimonial or financial problems, concentrating on your job can be difficult."
~ Overcoming Addiction and Escapism -- "A couple years ago I stopped believing in addiction. It’s not that I doubt the strength or existence of chemical and psychological dependencies — the bottom line is that everything is a choice. Addiction is somewhat like peer pressure–it hovers around, urging you to do something, but the decision to take action is yours. When people say that they can’t give up an addiction, it usually means that deep down they don’t want to or don’t believe that it’s possible."
~ Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought -- "Steven Pinker is a man stuffed with thoughts and gifted with language, a combination that has won him an unusually wide audience. In 1995, he published The Language Instinct, which was not just a best-selling Pulitzer Prize nominee. It was a best-selling Pulitzer Prize nominee about linguistics that was the first really meaty guide to how language actually works. Three similarly successful books followed. In one more about linguistics and two about human nature, Pinker gradually emerged as a polymath pioneer in the field of evolutionary psychology, which plenty of scientists had dismissed as mere storytelling but has thrived, thanks largely to his efforts."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ The Real Carver: Expansive or Minimal? -- "Tess Gallagher, the widow of Raymond Carver, one of the most celebrated American short-story writers of the 20th century, is spearheading an effort to publish a volume of 17 original Carver stories whose highly edited versions were published in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” his breakout 1981 book."
~ Crack Users Do More Time Than People Convicted of Manslaughter -- "When crack cocaine possession means 24 years in prison and manslaughter means only 3, you know something is seriously wrong with the U.S. criminal justice system."
~ The Dalai Lama -- "Tenzin Gyatso is awarded the Congressional Gold Medal."
~ Burma: 3,000 Detained in Protest -- "Burma's military junta acknowledged Wednesday that it detained nearly 3,000 people during a crackdown on recent pro-democracy protests, with hundreds still remaining in custody."
~ The Notion: An Epitaph for the Bush Era -- "As a recently released document shows, the President remains "at peace with himself" no matter what."
~ Countdown to Internet Taxes -- "See how soon it will be before the Internet becomes taxed."
~ Social Security Rising 2.3% -- "Benefits for nearly 50 million Americans will increase by smallest rate in four years."
~ Fineman: The Gore effect on Hillary Clinton -- "Al Gore won't run. But he will affect the campaign."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Researchers examine world's potential to produce biodiesel -- "What do the countries of Thailand, Uruguay and Ghana have in common? They all could become leading producers of the emerging renewable fuel known as biodiesel, says a study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies."
~ Is Mars dead, or is it only sleeping? -- "The surface of Mars is completely hostile to life as we know it. Martian deserts are blasted by radiation from the sun and space. The air is so thin, cold, and dry, if liquid water were present on the surface, it would freeze and boil at the same time. But there is evidence, like vast, dried up riverbeds, that Mars once was a warm and wet world that could have supported life. Are the best times over, at least for life, on Mars?"
~ Earliest evidence for reptiles -- "Newly discovered fossilised footprints provide the earliest evidence yet for the evolution of reptiles - a major event in the history of life. They are 315 million years old, making reptiles up to 3 million years older than previously thought."
~ Physicists Build Unparticle Models Guided by Big Bang and Supernovae -- "Cosmology and astrophysics may help guide physicists in building a model of “unparticles,” a newly proposed sector of physics. Recently, Hooman Davoudiasl of Brookhaven National Laboratory has investigated some basic requirements that unparticles must fulfill to ensure that our standard picture of the universe remains intact."
~ Massive black hole enters the record books -- "Astronomers have found the biggest stellar black hole so far, a monster with a mass 15.65 times that of our Sun, lurking in a nearby spiral-shaped galaxy."
~ The enGorsement -- "Some commentators are taking the unique approach of discussing Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize not in terms of whether he'll run for president, but in terms ofthe dangers of climate change who he'll endorse for president."
~ Early Humans Wore Makeup, Ate Mussels -- "A South African cave yields clues to an ancient beach party some 164,000 years ago."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Dalai Lama to Receive Honor in America Today -- "His Holiness the Dalai Lama will receive the Congressional Gold Medal--America's highest civilian honor--in a ceremony today. It is to be awarded to him in recognition of his contributions to peace, non-violence, human rights and religious understanding. Predictably China is angry over the award to which the Tibetan Buddhist monk replied with a laugh, 'That always happens.'"
~ Integral Perspectives: More Than One Path -- "Recently, I've been thinking, doing, living, and exploring the many, many different paths to living an Embodied Integral Life. Ken Wilber, who continues to popularize this movement that is both a philosophy and a stage of consciousness, has masterfully built upon on those integral souls who came before and created a framework (the philosophy) that allows the expansion and explosion into Integral Consciousness (the stage)."
~ The Techsattva: The Subjectivity of Neuroscience -- "Episode #4 of urchinTracker ('/outbound/article/www.techsattva.com');">The Techsattva was just released: In this episode I speak with Neuroscientist and meditator Daniel Rizzuto. We discuss the intersection between contemplation, science, and technology, including the leading-edge of Neural feedback and it’s relationship to state awareness and state management."
~ Hell (Part II): In Iraq -- "Speaking of hell, I have been promising to write about Aidan Delgado’s book, “The Sutras of Abu Ghraib: Notes from a Conscientious Objector in Iraq.” As the title suggests, it’s the personal—very personal—memoir of a young Buddhist man who had the extreme misfortune to be in the process of enlisting in the US Army on the very day those Muslim miscreants chose to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He had, in fact, signed his enlistment papers only minutes before hearing the news."
~ AQAL Journal call - Integral Healthcare and Medicine - 11.03.07 -- "It's a pleasure to remind you about one of the greatest opportunities available to members of Integral Institute to personally connect with Ken Wilber. Please join us next weekend for Ken's bi-weekly conference call! Ken will once again be responding to your questions from AQAL: Journal of Integral Theory and Practice. The topic of next week's discussion will be Integral Healthcare and Medicine."
~ Marvin Minsky's Dreams of Immortality -- "My consciousness course rolls on, and this week we are talking about the question of AI and machine consciousness. So when I was looking through the New Scientist a few days ago, I noticed the name of Marvin Minsky, one of the founders of the AI labs at MIT over in the States. The article, on closer inspection, was a damned curious one."
~ The Opinion of the New President of Dogen Sangha International -- "Recently I have received an email letter from the new president of Dogen Sangha International, Ven Brad Warner. And reading it I have felt that there is a new tendency in Buddhist organizations, which is sincerely thinking of the future situations of Buddhist organizations."
"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."
~ Virginia Woolf
Image of the day:
BODY
~ Avoiding the two most common lifting injuries -- "There are some very common weight lifting injuries that are often seen among those who aren’t fully aware of what they are doing in the gym. It is important you make yourself aware of these and do your best to avoid them at all costs because if you don’t, you likely will find yourself sidelined with an injury."
~ Leg Training Myths Exposed -- "You know that it's better to go below parallel when squatting or that you don't have to stop half-way when you're leg pressing, but do you know why? Arm yourself with knowledge and bitch-slap that dopey personal trainer."
~ How to Avoid Leaning Forward on Squats -- "A common error on the Squat is to lean forward. Check the picture above for an example of a Squat turning into a Goodmorning. Leaning forward is bad. This article will teach you how to avoid leaning forward on the Squat & why."
~ Soreness After Exercise Not Prevented By Stretching Out -- "Studies show that stretching before or after exercise has little or no effect on muscle soreness between half a day and three days later, a team of Cochrane Researchers has found. Many people stretch before starting to exercise, and some stretch again at the end of a period of exertion. The aim may be to prevent injury, to promote higher performance, or to limit the chances of feeling stiff in the days after the exercise." Stretching after weight training may not reduce soreness, but it will increase flexibility.
~ Study: Eating Soy May Slash Sperm Count -- "Men who eat half a serving of soy a day have drastically fewer sperm."
~ Exercise improves older adults' balance -- "Regular exercise may help older adults stay steady on their feet, potentially cutting their risk of falls and fractures, according to a new research review."
~ Facing Fibromyalgia -- "Find out the latest in treatments for fibromyalgia."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ The Ten Videos to Change How You View the World -- "I believe that a sign of good information is that it makes you think. If reading a book, listening to a lecture or watching a video doesn’t change how you think, it probably isn’t that important. But if you encounter something that forces you to change your views, even if you don’t completely agree with it, you’ve found something valuable." These are all TED Talks, some of which have been posted here.
~ One Tip to Decrease Suffering in Your Life -- "One simple yet powerful thing you can do to remove quite a bit of suffering from your life is to be accepting."
~ How to Be a Friend of Yourself -- "We often focus on building relationships with others that we forget the essential first step: being friends of ourselves. That is the crucial first step if we are to have good relationships with others. How can we have good relationships with others if we don’t even have good relationship with ourselves?"
~ Study Of Sexual Offenders -- "While it is commonly thought that men with low IQs sexually offend because of a lack of knowledge or sexual deviance, new research has found the men may sexually offend because of their exposure to "corrective" sex education previously taken."
~ Relax: They Aren’t Thinking About You! -- "It may be comforting to realize that most people, most of the time, are far too self absorbed to notice any of the myriad ways in which many of us convince ourselves that we are doing something wrong (on a long continuum from something foul and inexcusable, to something less than perfect). But in the long run it is hardly a comforting picture, everyone walking around thinking about what everyone else is thinking about them; in fact it looks like a colossal waste of time and energy."
~ Work and Life: 15 Ways to Strike a Balance -- "Finding work-life balance in today’s crazy-paced world is no simple task. Spend more time at work than at home and you miss out on a rewarding personal life. Then again, if you’re facing challenges in your personal life such as caring for an aging parent or coping with matrimonial or financial problems, concentrating on your job can be difficult."
~ Overcoming Addiction and Escapism -- "A couple years ago I stopped believing in addiction. It’s not that I doubt the strength or existence of chemical and psychological dependencies — the bottom line is that everything is a choice. Addiction is somewhat like peer pressure–it hovers around, urging you to do something, but the decision to take action is yours. When people say that they can’t give up an addiction, it usually means that deep down they don’t want to or don’t believe that it’s possible."
~ Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought -- "Steven Pinker is a man stuffed with thoughts and gifted with language, a combination that has won him an unusually wide audience. In 1995, he published The Language Instinct, which was not just a best-selling Pulitzer Prize nominee. It was a best-selling Pulitzer Prize nominee about linguistics that was the first really meaty guide to how language actually works. Three similarly successful books followed. In one more about linguistics and two about human nature, Pinker gradually emerged as a polymath pioneer in the field of evolutionary psychology, which plenty of scientists had dismissed as mere storytelling but has thrived, thanks largely to his efforts."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ The Real Carver: Expansive or Minimal? -- "Tess Gallagher, the widow of Raymond Carver, one of the most celebrated American short-story writers of the 20th century, is spearheading an effort to publish a volume of 17 original Carver stories whose highly edited versions were published in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” his breakout 1981 book."
~ Crack Users Do More Time Than People Convicted of Manslaughter -- "When crack cocaine possession means 24 years in prison and manslaughter means only 3, you know something is seriously wrong with the U.S. criminal justice system."
~ The Dalai Lama -- "Tenzin Gyatso is awarded the Congressional Gold Medal."
~ Burma: 3,000 Detained in Protest -- "Burma's military junta acknowledged Wednesday that it detained nearly 3,000 people during a crackdown on recent pro-democracy protests, with hundreds still remaining in custody."
~ The Notion: An Epitaph for the Bush Era -- "As a recently released document shows, the President remains "at peace with himself" no matter what."
~ Countdown to Internet Taxes -- "See how soon it will be before the Internet becomes taxed."
~ Social Security Rising 2.3% -- "Benefits for nearly 50 million Americans will increase by smallest rate in four years."
~ Fineman: The Gore effect on Hillary Clinton -- "Al Gore won't run. But he will affect the campaign."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Researchers examine world's potential to produce biodiesel -- "What do the countries of Thailand, Uruguay and Ghana have in common? They all could become leading producers of the emerging renewable fuel known as biodiesel, says a study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies."
~ Is Mars dead, or is it only sleeping? -- "The surface of Mars is completely hostile to life as we know it. Martian deserts are blasted by radiation from the sun and space. The air is so thin, cold, and dry, if liquid water were present on the surface, it would freeze and boil at the same time. But there is evidence, like vast, dried up riverbeds, that Mars once was a warm and wet world that could have supported life. Are the best times over, at least for life, on Mars?"
~ Earliest evidence for reptiles -- "Newly discovered fossilised footprints provide the earliest evidence yet for the evolution of reptiles - a major event in the history of life. They are 315 million years old, making reptiles up to 3 million years older than previously thought."
~ Physicists Build Unparticle Models Guided by Big Bang and Supernovae -- "Cosmology and astrophysics may help guide physicists in building a model of “unparticles,” a newly proposed sector of physics. Recently, Hooman Davoudiasl of Brookhaven National Laboratory has investigated some basic requirements that unparticles must fulfill to ensure that our standard picture of the universe remains intact."
~ Massive black hole enters the record books -- "Astronomers have found the biggest stellar black hole so far, a monster with a mass 15.65 times that of our Sun, lurking in a nearby spiral-shaped galaxy."
~ The enGorsement -- "Some commentators are taking the unique approach of discussing Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize not in terms of whether he'll run for president, but in terms of
~ Early Humans Wore Makeup, Ate Mussels -- "A South African cave yields clues to an ancient beach party some 164,000 years ago."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Dalai Lama to Receive Honor in America Today -- "His Holiness the Dalai Lama will receive the Congressional Gold Medal--America's highest civilian honor--in a ceremony today. It is to be awarded to him in recognition of his contributions to peace, non-violence, human rights and religious understanding. Predictably China is angry over the award to which the Tibetan Buddhist monk replied with a laugh, 'That always happens.'"
~ Integral Perspectives: More Than One Path -- "Recently, I've been thinking, doing, living, and exploring the many, many different paths to living an Embodied Integral Life. Ken Wilber, who continues to popularize this movement that is both a philosophy and a stage of consciousness, has masterfully built upon on those integral souls who came before and created a framework (the philosophy) that allows the expansion and explosion into Integral Consciousness (the stage)."
~ The Techsattva: The Subjectivity of Neuroscience -- "Episode #4 of urchinTracker ('/outbound/article/www.techsattva.com');">The Techsattva was just released: In this episode I speak with Neuroscientist and meditator Daniel Rizzuto. We discuss the intersection between contemplation, science, and technology, including the leading-edge of Neural feedback and it’s relationship to state awareness and state management."
~ Hell (Part II): In Iraq -- "Speaking of hell, I have been promising to write about Aidan Delgado’s book, “The Sutras of Abu Ghraib: Notes from a Conscientious Objector in Iraq.” As the title suggests, it’s the personal—very personal—memoir of a young Buddhist man who had the extreme misfortune to be in the process of enlisting in the US Army on the very day those Muslim miscreants chose to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He had, in fact, signed his enlistment papers only minutes before hearing the news."
~ AQAL Journal call - Integral Healthcare and Medicine - 11.03.07 -- "It's a pleasure to remind you about one of the greatest opportunities available to members of Integral Institute to personally connect with Ken Wilber. Please join us next weekend for Ken's bi-weekly conference call! Ken will once again be responding to your questions from AQAL: Journal of Integral Theory and Practice. The topic of next week's discussion will be Integral Healthcare and Medicine."
~ Marvin Minsky's Dreams of Immortality -- "My consciousness course rolls on, and this week we are talking about the question of AI and machine consciousness. So when I was looking through the New Scientist a few days ago, I noticed the name of Marvin Minsky, one of the founders of the AI labs at MIT over in the States. The article, on closer inspection, was a damned curious one."
~ The Opinion of the New President of Dogen Sangha International -- "Recently I have received an email letter from the new president of Dogen Sangha International, Ven Brad Warner. And reading it I have felt that there is a new tendency in Buddhist organizations, which is sincerely thinking of the future situations of Buddhist organizations."
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Daily Om: In The Presence Of Difficulty
Today's Daily Om looks at the challenges and rewards of practicing compassion, even when it feels difficult to do so.
In The Presence Of Difficulty
Compassion
Compassion is the ability to see the deep connectedness between ourselves and others. Moreover, true compassion recognizes that all the boundaries we perceive between ourselves and others are an illusion. When we first begin to practice compassion, this very deep level of understanding may elude us, but we can have faith that if we start where we are, we will eventually feel our way toward it. We move closer to it every time we see past our own self-concern to accommodate concern for others. And, as with any skill, our compassion grows most in the presence of difficulty.
We practice small acts of compassion every day, when our loved ones are short-tempered or another driver cuts us off in traffic. We extend our forgiveness by trying to understand their point of view; we know how it is to feel stressed out or irritable. The practice of compassion becomes more difficult when we find ourselves unable to understand the actions of the person who offends us. These are the situations that ask us to look more deeply into ourselves, into parts of our psyches that we may want to deny, parts that we have repressed because society has labeled them bad or wrong. For example, acts of violence are often well beyond anything we ourselves have perpetuated, so when we are on the receiving end of such acts, we are often at a loss. This is where the real potential for growth begins, because we are called to shine a light inside ourselves and take responsibility for what we have disowned. It is at this juncture that we have the opportunity to transform from within.
This can seem like a very tall order, but when life presents us with circumstances that require our compassion, no matter how difficult, we can trust that we are ready. We can call upon all the light we have cultivated so far, allowing it to lead the way into the darkest parts of our own hearts, connecting us to the hearts of others in the understanding that is true compassion.
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Global Giving
The Kiva model is catching on, although this one makes more money for the people running the site than Kiva does.
Global Giving.
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Global Giving.
Tags:
Satire: Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters
From The Onion News Network:
Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters
For a majority of likely voters, meaningless bullshit will be the most important factor in deciding who they will vote for in 2008.
Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters
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Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Gratitude 10/16/07
Some things I am grateful for today:
1) The teachers I wrote about earlier tonight. It had been years since I had thought about some of them.
2) Curry chicken -- food o' the gods.
3) Books. I just started an older book by Stan Grof, Beyond the Brain, which is interesting so far. He begins with a look at how challenging it can be in science to move beyond the existing paradigm, relying on the work of Thomas Kuhn.
What are you grateful for today?
1) The teachers I wrote about earlier tonight. It had been years since I had thought about some of them.
2) Curry chicken -- food o' the gods.
3) Books. I just started an older book by Stan Grof, Beyond the Brain, which is interesting so far. He begins with a look at how challenging it can be in science to move beyond the existing paradigm, relying on the work of Thomas Kuhn.
What are you grateful for today?
Tags:
Honoring Our Teachers
Peter over at The Buddha Diaries has a thread going on teachers who have influenced our lives.
I wonder if you had teacher like this? I think we all did. I'd love to start a thread of tributes to such teachers--is this what's called a "meme"?. Would anyone out there care to pitch in?
Who inspired you? Who led the way to those insights that have guided your life? Whose teaching continues to resonate in your life? Please let me know, and pass on the invitation if you find it interesting.
I've been lucky to have four teachers who changed my life for the better.
In 4th grade, Mr. Carter taught me that if I want a good education, I have to be willing to do it on my own. There were three of us in that class who were bored after the first few days of class. So he got us 5th grade work, and when that was easy, he went to the middle school and got us more advanced work. He never let us be bored -- and he reminded us that if we want a good education, it will be up to us to do it for ourselves in the future.
In 8th grade, Sue Morgan (my communications teacher) suggested that I could write poetry to deal with my father's death -- a practice I continue till this day. She was the first teacher I ever had a crush on -- I would have done anything for her. But she recognized that I had no family support for coping with my dad's death and was wise enough to know that I needed an outlet. In some ways, she saved my life. If I hadn't written out some of my rage in the following years (in bad rhymes and dumb imagery), I may have hurt myself or someone else.
In college, James Dean made me love reading and writing about the books I read. Partly because of him, I changed majors in the middle of my senior year (from psych to English). He taught me to see the psychology in great works of fiction and great poetry. He also took interest in me as a person, which was most important of all. For three or four years, he was one of two father figures in my life. He eventually served on my thesis committee and helped me work through some of the bureaucracy I had to wade through to get an interdisciplinary Master's degree in the humanities (English, psychology, comparative religion).
I want to add one more teacher that I didn't mention in the comments over at Peter's blog. When I went back to school after flunking out of Oregon State, one of my first writing teachers was Bill Hotchkiss. I only took one real class from him, but I soon joined an informal poetry workshop he ran, and I have known him ever since as a friend and mentor. We disagree on so many topics, but his rigorous devotion to inquiry has shaped my own "need to know everything." I have never met another person in my life who is as widely educated in so many different topics. But the best thing about him is his HUGE heart. He will sacrifice anything for his friends and family. I have never known anyone else like him.
Which teachers have helped shaped your life? Drop by Peter's blog or leave a comment here -- let's honor those who have helped make us the people we are today.
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Speedlinking 10/16/07
Quote of the day:
"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."
~ Abraham Lincoln
Image of the day (Tristan Campbell):
BODY
~ Training for Newbies, Part 2 -- "What you've got here, newbies, is something most of us crusty veterans would have killed to have had when we were starting out. Now pay attention to this article so Christian won't have to rap you on your knuckles with an EZ curl bar!"
~ Big Bang-For-Your-Buck Exercises -- "Want to build great abs? Forget sit-ups. Want great biceps? Forget all those curls. Want a great chest? Forget the bench press. According to Chad, isolation movements are a waste of time. He's either nuts or a great visionary."
~ Interval Training to Improve Performance in Sports -- "The faster an athlete moves in training, the faster he or she will be able to move during competition. So athletes use a training technique called interval training in which they run, cycle, skate, ski or swim very fast for a short time. When they become severely short of breath, they slow down until they recover, and then move very fast again."
~ Gauging leg strength -- "One of the best ways to determine how you are progressing on your fitness program and how good of leg strength you have in general is with a wall squat test."
~ 50 Ways to Increase Your Squat -- "How do you increase your Squat? I recently searched the internet for ways to increase my Squat, but couldn’t find one article which had all different ways to increase your Squat."
~ 3 Minutes a Day to Keep Back Pain Away -- "Simple exercises and lifestyle changes go a long way in warding off back pain."
~ Eating Garlic Boosts Hydrogen Sulfide Which Relaxes Arteries -- "Eating garlic is one of the best ways to lower high blood pressure and protect yourself from cardiovascular disease. A new study from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) shows this protective effect is closely linked to how much hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is produced from garlic compounds interacting with red blood cells."
~ Fruit compound can fight some cancers -- "Lupeol, a compound in fruits like mangoes, grapes and strawberries, appears to be effective in killing and curbing the spread of cancer cells in the head and neck, a study in Hong Kong has found." Mmmm . . . mangoes.
PSYCHE/SELF
~ 8 points on emergency preparedness for winter depression -- "for some people, yet another bout of winter depression, or SAD (seasonal affective disorder) is just around the corner." Or you could live in AZ, where the damn sun is always shining.
~ The immortal brain -- "New Scientist has an article and video interviews with several transhumanists who are attempting to make the human brain immortal by reversing neural ageing, implanting stem cells and uploading the mind to a computer." I wouldn't want my mind in a computer -- what fun is life without a body?
~ How schizophrenia develops: Major clues discovered -- "Schizophrenia may occur, in part, because of a problem in an intermittent on/off switch for a gene involved in making a key chemical messenger in the brain, scientists have found in a study of human brain tissue. The researchers found that the gene is turned on at increasingly high rates during normal development of the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain involved in higher functions like thinking and decision-making - but that this normal increase may not occur in people with schizophrenia."
~ Attention! How your brain manages its need to heed -- "Two perennial polarities beloved by brain geeks -- networks versus modules and top-down versus bottom-up attention -- get linked in this week's essay, in which UC Berkeley's Mark D'Esposito reviews an imaging study of how monkeys use their brains to direct their attention. The results, suggests D'Esposito, add threads to vital strands of neuroscientific thought."
~ SEROQUEL Exhibits Distinct Mechanism Of Action And Reduces The Risk Of A Mood Event In Bipolar I Disorder -- "New long-term clinical trial data presented recently at the European Congress of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) in Vienna showed that SEROQUEL® (quetiapine fumarate) in combination with lithium or divalproex significantly increases the time to recurrence of any mood event in patients with bipolar I disorder. Further pre-clinical data demonstrated that three neurotransmitter pathways are targeted by SEROQUEL in the brain - this may contribute to its unique clinical profile."
~ Blood May Help Us Think By Actively Modulating How Neurons Process Information - MIT -- "MIT scientists propose that blood may help us think, in addition to its well-known role as the conveyor of fuel and oxygen to brain cells. "We hypothesize that blood actively modulates how neurons process information," explains Christopher Moore, a principle investigator in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, in an invited review in the Journal of Neurophysiology."
~ 13 Strategies for Breaking Bad Habits and Cultivating Good Ones -- "Most of life is habitual. You do the same things you did yesterday, the day before and every day for the last month. It’s estimated that out of every 11,000 signals we receive from our senses, our brain only consciously processes 40."
~ Living a Long, Happy Life -- "Fill life with happy feelings and live to a hundred."
~ Give and Live -- "You live longer when you give."
~ Genetic contributions to human brain morphology and intelligence -- "While showing an impressive growth prenatally, the human brain is not completed at birth. There is considerable brain growth during childhood with dynamic changes taking place in the human brain throughout life, probably for adaptation to our environments."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Drug makers, med school ties common -- "Nearly two-thirds of academic leaders surveyed at U.S. medical schools and teaching hospitals have financial ties to industry, illustrating how pervasive these relationships have become, researchers say."
~ Anne Enright Wins Man Booker Prize for Fiction -- "The Irish writer Anne Enright won the Man Booker fiction prize Tuesday for “The Gathering,” an uncompromising portrait of a troubled family." For those who don't know, the Booker is the UK version of the National Book Award.
~ Karen Kisslinger: Discounted Health Care For Healthier People? -- This is a great post with no single quote that sums it up -- but we should be thinking more about cost/benefits for health and healthy living, especially as far as health care is concerned.
~ Heather Wood: 10 Mistakes White People Make When Talking About Race -- "It's easy to botch an important discussion about race with fear, ignorance, or just plain silliness. Uninformed--or even overly politically correct--white people are the major offenders, sure, but anyone without adequate information can be guilty of sounding like a racist or an idiot (wait, that's redundant). With the help of some favorite (and vocal) celebrities and writers, here are 10 things not to do when trying to have an intellectual discussion about race--which, to be clear, you should do. But first learn from these mistakes."
~ What's in the Vatican Secret Archives? -- "A publishing house associated with the Vatican announced on Friday that it will publish copies of the Parchment of Chinon, a 700-year-old document about the Knights Templar that was uncovered in the Vatican Secret Archives in 2001. What other goodies do the secret archives hold?"
~ Cat Championships -- "Cat fanciers descend on New York's Madison Square Garden for the fifth annual CFA-IAMS Cat Championships."
~ The Fall of Marion Jones, Inc. -- "The sports establishment was shocked, shocked by her steroid-fueled Olympic victories. But they played a role in her downfall."
~ Bush Meets With Dalai Lama, Despite China's Warnings -- " President Bush met privately with the Dalai Lama today, despite earlier warnings from China that the honors being accorded the long-exiled Buddhist leader this week by Congress and the White House would harm U.S.-Chinese relations." Bush gets one right, even if it was for the wrong reasons.
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Staph fatalities may exceed AIDS deaths (AP) -- "More than 90,000 Americans get potentially deadly infections each year from a drug-resistant staph "superbug," the government reported Tuesday in its first overall estimate of invasive disease caused by the germ."
~ Facebook OKs Safeguards To Fight Obscenity -- "New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced an agreement with social networking Web site Facebook to enforce safeguards against obscene content and sexual predators using the site."
~ Upper Midwest forests are losing diversity, complexity -- "Forests in the nation's Upper Midwest have changed greatly since the time of the early settlers. And more changes may be coming."
~ China Eyes Joining Space Station Project -- "China hopes to join an international space station project that already counts leading space powers like the United States and Russia as its members, a government official said Tuesday."
~ Oriental Beetle Discovered in Indiana -- "An invasive beetle that's native to Japan has been discovered in Indiana for the first time as the plant-munching insect edges further into the Midwest."
~ Microsoft Links Phone, Video to Office -- "Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday launched two new programs that allow people to place calls right from the Outlook e-mail program, but analysts say businesses won't throw away their reliable office phone systems until the software maker's tools are just as good."
~ Sea Basin Expedition Nets Rare Species -- "Scientists exploring a deep ocean basin in search of species isolated for millions of years found marine life believed to be previously undiscovered, including a tentacled orange worm and an unusual black jellyfish."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Hell -- "My thoughts of hell, this morning, are inspired by watching only a few minutes (sadly, I would have liked to watch more, but my weary head dictated otherwise) of a program about hell on the History Channel."
~ A LETTER TO ALL MY FRIENDS AND CRITICS (also my friends) ON INTENTBLOG -- "Please rest assured that I will personally correspond with Skeptisch through Mallika and make arrangements to meet him in New York. We will meet at a mutually convenient time. He is free to bring any neutral observers with him as will I. (Skeptisch will pay for his own travel and accommodations and for any colleagues he wishes to bring, as will I.) We will all observe the same phenomena and then come up with our own interpretations." Looks like a paranormal smackdown is brewing.
~ Integral Life Practice Conference calls – Free with your ILP Kit! -- "Do you already own an Integral Life Practice Kit and are looking for something more to inspire your practice? Or maybe you have some questions you'd like to ask the teachers. Now you'll have the opportunity to find that inspiration and get your questions answered in our upcoming ILP conference calls."
~ Teaching (Part II); and a Challenge -- "I can count on one hand the number of teachers who truly reached me in the course of my education, all the way from kindergarten through doctorate. Those were the people who inspired me not with how much they knew (although this may have been impressive, too) but with their peculiar passion, their inner sense of self, their uncompromising readiness to show the inside out."
~ What Can You Expect to Receive from the Practice of a (R)evolutionary Integral Spirituality? -- "The integral spiritual perspectives of (R)evolutionary Spirituality are great news for anyone who is open to a more inclusive, transcendent, embodied and non-authoritarian spiritual message. At its heart, (r)evolutionary spirituality is an open source, evolutionary process integrating and connecting the core spiritual wisdom of humanity’s western and eastern spiritual traditions while at the same time striving to transcend the ineffective, inapplicable or pathological elements of those same spiritual traditions."
~ Ken Wilber's House For Sale! -- "Ken Wilber is selling his Boulder, CO home after living there for over ten years (he now lives in Denver). In this house, Ken wrote Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, A Brief History of Everything, The Eye of Spirit, The Marriage of Sense and Soul, One Taste, Integral Psychology, A Theory of Everything, Boomeritis, and edited The Collected Works volumes 1-8. It was also here that Integral Institute was born, with over 450 of the world’s most gifted individuals gathering in this remarkable space to create an institution capable of bringing the Integral Approach into the world." Nice house.
~ Mahamudra by Patrick Sweeney -- "Patrick Sweeney leading a Mahamudra meditation at the 2nd annual Integral Spiritual Center gathering. Time 18 minutes. Enjoy!"
~ Evolutionary Consciousness; Is There Such a Thing? -- "Does consciousness evolve? Was the consciousness of the Buddha or Einstein a product of evolution? If yes, why did the overall consciousness of the human species not evolve to the same level?"
~ Essay published, and Kosmos -- "Phew, finally finished a few days ago my latest essay, Redefining Integral, which has just appeared on Frank Visser's Integral World website (based on my earlier blog post to Integral Praxis of basically the same name, but with heaps more stuff). It should be a seminal essay in the field, and I feel it is my best essay on the Integral Movement so far."
"Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally."
~ Abraham Lincoln
Image of the day (Tristan Campbell):
BODY
~ Training for Newbies, Part 2 -- "What you've got here, newbies, is something most of us crusty veterans would have killed to have had when we were starting out. Now pay attention to this article so Christian won't have to rap you on your knuckles with an EZ curl bar!"
~ Big Bang-For-Your-Buck Exercises -- "Want to build great abs? Forget sit-ups. Want great biceps? Forget all those curls. Want a great chest? Forget the bench press. According to Chad, isolation movements are a waste of time. He's either nuts or a great visionary."
~ Interval Training to Improve Performance in Sports -- "The faster an athlete moves in training, the faster he or she will be able to move during competition. So athletes use a training technique called interval training in which they run, cycle, skate, ski or swim very fast for a short time. When they become severely short of breath, they slow down until they recover, and then move very fast again."
~ Gauging leg strength -- "One of the best ways to determine how you are progressing on your fitness program and how good of leg strength you have in general is with a wall squat test."
~ 50 Ways to Increase Your Squat -- "How do you increase your Squat? I recently searched the internet for ways to increase my Squat, but couldn’t find one article which had all different ways to increase your Squat."
~ 3 Minutes a Day to Keep Back Pain Away -- "Simple exercises and lifestyle changes go a long way in warding off back pain."
~ Eating Garlic Boosts Hydrogen Sulfide Which Relaxes Arteries -- "Eating garlic is one of the best ways to lower high blood pressure and protect yourself from cardiovascular disease. A new study from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) shows this protective effect is closely linked to how much hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is produced from garlic compounds interacting with red blood cells."
~ Fruit compound can fight some cancers -- "Lupeol, a compound in fruits like mangoes, grapes and strawberries, appears to be effective in killing and curbing the spread of cancer cells in the head and neck, a study in Hong Kong has found." Mmmm . . . mangoes.
PSYCHE/SELF
~ 8 points on emergency preparedness for winter depression -- "for some people, yet another bout of winter depression, or SAD (seasonal affective disorder) is just around the corner." Or you could live in AZ, where the damn sun is always shining.
~ The immortal brain -- "New Scientist has an article and video interviews with several transhumanists who are attempting to make the human brain immortal by reversing neural ageing, implanting stem cells and uploading the mind to a computer." I wouldn't want my mind in a computer -- what fun is life without a body?
~ How schizophrenia develops: Major clues discovered -- "Schizophrenia may occur, in part, because of a problem in an intermittent on/off switch for a gene involved in making a key chemical messenger in the brain, scientists have found in a study of human brain tissue. The researchers found that the gene is turned on at increasingly high rates during normal development of the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain involved in higher functions like thinking and decision-making - but that this normal increase may not occur in people with schizophrenia."
~ Attention! How your brain manages its need to heed -- "Two perennial polarities beloved by brain geeks -- networks versus modules and top-down versus bottom-up attention -- get linked in this week's essay, in which UC Berkeley's Mark D'Esposito reviews an imaging study of how monkeys use their brains to direct their attention. The results, suggests D'Esposito, add threads to vital strands of neuroscientific thought."
~ SEROQUEL Exhibits Distinct Mechanism Of Action And Reduces The Risk Of A Mood Event In Bipolar I Disorder -- "New long-term clinical trial data presented recently at the European Congress of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) in Vienna showed that SEROQUEL® (quetiapine fumarate) in combination with lithium or divalproex significantly increases the time to recurrence of any mood event in patients with bipolar I disorder. Further pre-clinical data demonstrated that three neurotransmitter pathways are targeted by SEROQUEL in the brain - this may contribute to its unique clinical profile."
~ Blood May Help Us Think By Actively Modulating How Neurons Process Information - MIT -- "MIT scientists propose that blood may help us think, in addition to its well-known role as the conveyor of fuel and oxygen to brain cells. "We hypothesize that blood actively modulates how neurons process information," explains Christopher Moore, a principle investigator in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, in an invited review in the Journal of Neurophysiology."
~ 13 Strategies for Breaking Bad Habits and Cultivating Good Ones -- "Most of life is habitual. You do the same things you did yesterday, the day before and every day for the last month. It’s estimated that out of every 11,000 signals we receive from our senses, our brain only consciously processes 40."
~ Living a Long, Happy Life -- "Fill life with happy feelings and live to a hundred."
~ Give and Live -- "You live longer when you give."
~ Genetic contributions to human brain morphology and intelligence -- "While showing an impressive growth prenatally, the human brain is not completed at birth. There is considerable brain growth during childhood with dynamic changes taking place in the human brain throughout life, probably for adaptation to our environments."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Drug makers, med school ties common -- "Nearly two-thirds of academic leaders surveyed at U.S. medical schools and teaching hospitals have financial ties to industry, illustrating how pervasive these relationships have become, researchers say."
~ Anne Enright Wins Man Booker Prize for Fiction -- "The Irish writer Anne Enright won the Man Booker fiction prize Tuesday for “The Gathering,” an uncompromising portrait of a troubled family." For those who don't know, the Booker is the UK version of the National Book Award.
~ Karen Kisslinger: Discounted Health Care For Healthier People? -- This is a great post with no single quote that sums it up -- but we should be thinking more about cost/benefits for health and healthy living, especially as far as health care is concerned.
~ Heather Wood: 10 Mistakes White People Make When Talking About Race -- "It's easy to botch an important discussion about race with fear, ignorance, or just plain silliness. Uninformed--or even overly politically correct--white people are the major offenders, sure, but anyone without adequate information can be guilty of sounding like a racist or an idiot (wait, that's redundant). With the help of some favorite (and vocal) celebrities and writers, here are 10 things not to do when trying to have an intellectual discussion about race--which, to be clear, you should do. But first learn from these mistakes."
~ What's in the Vatican Secret Archives? -- "A publishing house associated with the Vatican announced on Friday that it will publish copies of the Parchment of Chinon, a 700-year-old document about the Knights Templar that was uncovered in the Vatican Secret Archives in 2001. What other goodies do the secret archives hold?"
~ Cat Championships -- "Cat fanciers descend on New York's Madison Square Garden for the fifth annual CFA-IAMS Cat Championships."
~ The Fall of Marion Jones, Inc. -- "The sports establishment was shocked, shocked by her steroid-fueled Olympic victories. But they played a role in her downfall."
~ Bush Meets With Dalai Lama, Despite China's Warnings -- " President Bush met privately with the Dalai Lama today, despite earlier warnings from China that the honors being accorded the long-exiled Buddhist leader this week by Congress and the White House would harm U.S.-Chinese relations." Bush gets one right, even if it was for the wrong reasons.
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Staph fatalities may exceed AIDS deaths (AP) -- "More than 90,000 Americans get potentially deadly infections each year from a drug-resistant staph "superbug," the government reported Tuesday in its first overall estimate of invasive disease caused by the germ."
~ Facebook OKs Safeguards To Fight Obscenity -- "New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced an agreement with social networking Web site Facebook to enforce safeguards against obscene content and sexual predators using the site."
~ Upper Midwest forests are losing diversity, complexity -- "Forests in the nation's Upper Midwest have changed greatly since the time of the early settlers. And more changes may be coming."
~ China Eyes Joining Space Station Project -- "China hopes to join an international space station project that already counts leading space powers like the United States and Russia as its members, a government official said Tuesday."
~ Oriental Beetle Discovered in Indiana -- "An invasive beetle that's native to Japan has been discovered in Indiana for the first time as the plant-munching insect edges further into the Midwest."
~ Microsoft Links Phone, Video to Office -- "Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday launched two new programs that allow people to place calls right from the Outlook e-mail program, but analysts say businesses won't throw away their reliable office phone systems until the software maker's tools are just as good."
~ Sea Basin Expedition Nets Rare Species -- "Scientists exploring a deep ocean basin in search of species isolated for millions of years found marine life believed to be previously undiscovered, including a tentacled orange worm and an unusual black jellyfish."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Hell -- "My thoughts of hell, this morning, are inspired by watching only a few minutes (sadly, I would have liked to watch more, but my weary head dictated otherwise) of a program about hell on the History Channel."
~ A LETTER TO ALL MY FRIENDS AND CRITICS (also my friends) ON INTENTBLOG -- "Please rest assured that I will personally correspond with Skeptisch through Mallika and make arrangements to meet him in New York. We will meet at a mutually convenient time. He is free to bring any neutral observers with him as will I. (Skeptisch will pay for his own travel and accommodations and for any colleagues he wishes to bring, as will I.) We will all observe the same phenomena and then come up with our own interpretations." Looks like a paranormal smackdown is brewing.
~ Integral Life Practice Conference calls – Free with your ILP Kit! -- "Do you already own an Integral Life Practice Kit and are looking for something more to inspire your practice? Or maybe you have some questions you'd like to ask the teachers. Now you'll have the opportunity to find that inspiration and get your questions answered in our upcoming ILP conference calls."
~ Teaching (Part II); and a Challenge -- "I can count on one hand the number of teachers who truly reached me in the course of my education, all the way from kindergarten through doctorate. Those were the people who inspired me not with how much they knew (although this may have been impressive, too) but with their peculiar passion, their inner sense of self, their uncompromising readiness to show the inside out."
~ What Can You Expect to Receive from the Practice of a (R)evolutionary Integral Spirituality? -- "The integral spiritual perspectives of (R)evolutionary Spirituality are great news for anyone who is open to a more inclusive, transcendent, embodied and non-authoritarian spiritual message. At its heart, (r)evolutionary spirituality is an open source, evolutionary process integrating and connecting the core spiritual wisdom of humanity’s western and eastern spiritual traditions while at the same time striving to transcend the ineffective, inapplicable or pathological elements of those same spiritual traditions."
~ Ken Wilber's House For Sale! -- "Ken Wilber is selling his Boulder, CO home after living there for over ten years (he now lives in Denver). In this house, Ken wrote Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, A Brief History of Everything, The Eye of Spirit, The Marriage of Sense and Soul, One Taste, Integral Psychology, A Theory of Everything, Boomeritis, and edited The Collected Works volumes 1-8. It was also here that Integral Institute was born, with over 450 of the world’s most gifted individuals gathering in this remarkable space to create an institution capable of bringing the Integral Approach into the world." Nice house.
~ Mahamudra by Patrick Sweeney -- "Patrick Sweeney leading a Mahamudra meditation at the 2nd annual Integral Spiritual Center gathering. Time 18 minutes. Enjoy!"
~ Evolutionary Consciousness; Is There Such a Thing? -- "Does consciousness evolve? Was the consciousness of the Buddha or Einstein a product of evolution? If yes, why did the overall consciousness of the human species not evolve to the same level?"
~ Essay published, and Kosmos -- "Phew, finally finished a few days ago my latest essay, Redefining Integral, which has just appeared on Frank Visser's Integral World website (based on my earlier blog post to Integral Praxis of basically the same name, but with heaps more stuff). It should be a seminal essay in the field, and I feel it is my best essay on the Integral Movement so far."
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Daily Dharma: Speech is a Powerful Force
Today's Daily Dharma from Tricycle:
Speech is a Powerful Force
Speech is a powerful force. But how much attention do we pay to our speech? . . . Do we actually bring some wisdom and sensitivity to our speaking? What is behind our speech, what motivates it? Does something really have to be said? When I was first getting into the practice of thinking and learning about speech, I conducted an experiment. For several months I decided not to speak about any third person; I would not speak to somebody about somebody else. No gossip. Ninety percent of my speech was eliminated. Before I did that I had no idea that I had spent so much time and energy engaged in that kind of talking. It is not that my speech had been particularly malicious, but for the most part it had been useless. I found it tremendously interesting to watch the impact this experiment had on my mind. As I stopped speaking in this way, I found that one way or another a lot of my speech had been a judgment about somebody else. By stopping such speech for a while, my mind became less judgmental, not only of others, but also of myself, and it was a great relief.
~ Joseph Goldstein, Transforming the Mind, Healing the World; from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book
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Proud Atheists
Salon has a cool interview with Steven Pinker and his partner Rebecca Goldstein (an author/teacher).
Oct. 15, 2007 | "I've always been obsessed with the mind-body problem," says philosopher Renee Feuer Himmel. "It's the essential problem of metaphysics, about both the world out there and the world in here."
Renee is the fictional alter ego of novelist and philosopher Rebecca Goldstein. In her 1983 novel, "The Mind-Body Problem," Goldstein laid out her own metaphysical concerns, which include the mystery of consciousness and the struggle between reason and emotion. As a novelist, she's drawn to the quirky lives of scientists and philosophers. She's also fascinated by history's great rationalist thinkers. She's written nonfiction accounts of the 17th-century Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza and the 20th-century mathematician-philosopher Kurt Gödel.
Perhaps it's not surprising that Goldstein would end up living with Steven Pinker, a leading theorist of the mind. He's a cognitive psychologist at Harvard; she's a philosopher who's taught at several colleges. Although they come out of different disciplines, they mine much of the same territory: language, consciousness, and the tension between science and religion. If Boston is ground zero for intellectuals, then Pinker and Goldstein must rank as one of America's brainiest power couples.
With a series of bestselling books on language and human nature, including "How the Mind Works," Pinker has emerged as his generation's most influential cognitive theorist. His work on the evolution of language, and how humans possess an innate capacity for language, revolutionized linguistics. His writing about the nature/nurture debate helped shift prevailing thinking away from seeing human nature as a blank slate.
Pinker and Goldstein share a basic philosophical outlook, but I discovered that their views diverge somewhat when it comes to the "science and religion" debate. In a wide-ranging joint interview, we talked about animals and language, atheism and astrology, Iraq and faith, and their most recent books, Goldstein's "Betraying Spinoza" and Pinker's "The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature."
Read the interview.
What a power couple -- they'd be fun guests at a dinner party.
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