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Thursday, January 5, 2012

Bus at night

When I have the double seat all for myself, and the other travelers do not stink, and I have my sound isolating earbuds, and I am playing my music, and it is dark outside, and I know I have brought with me everything I will need for this trip, and my iPhone is almost fully charged, traveling by bus is not bad.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Center Stage ATLANTA - All You Need is Now! 4/4

Quotes 2

• "He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage–he won't have man rivals." Scientist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

• "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." Bertrand Russell

• "Strive not to be a success but rather to be of value." Albert Einstein

• "Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim." George Santayana

• "Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve the continuation of the species." W. Somerset Maugham

Good Italian Amaros

• S. Maria al Monte Amaro Naturale ($27). Its aroma is evocative of incense used at Sunday mass.

• Amaro Nonino ($37). Impeccable balance of sweetness, bitterness, fruit and spice.

• Ditta Bortolo Nardini ($45). Pours like maple syrup and delivers a beautifully nuanced bouquet.

Books to Read 1

• The Social Animal by David Brooks

• The Longevity Project By Friedman and Martin

• Never Say Die by Susan Jacobi

• How We Age by Marc Agronin

• Lastingness by Nicholas Delbanco

Random News

• Light-emitting TVs, smartphones, computers, and video-game players can suppress the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin and rev us up, making it difficult to nod off.

• Raising kids causes marital stress and other varieties of unhappiness.However, parents over 50 are happier than their childless counterparts, as when kids grow up they become a source of emotional and financial support.

• Researchers at Northwestern University have unlocked the genetic code that allows them to transform stem and skin cells into basal forebrain cholinergic neurons. Transplanting these cells into the brains of Alzheimer's patients could restore their mental function.

Quotes 1

• "Every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward." Thomas Edison

• "That men do ot learn from the lesson of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach." Aldous Huxley

• "Every calamity is to be overcome by endurance." Virgil

Sunday, April 3, 2011

You Know

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Sunday, March 20, 2011

Abandoned

Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

"Becker's philosophy ... is a braid wowen form four strands.

1. The world is terrifying. Mother Nature is a brutal bitch, red in tooth and claw, who destroys what she creates. We live in a world in which the routine activity for organism

2. The basic motivation for human behavior is our biological need to control our basic anxiety, to deny the terror of death. That is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings-and with all this yet to die.

3. Since the terror of death is so overwhelming, we conspire to keep it unconscious. But the price we pay is high. We repress our bodies to purchase a soul; we sacrifice pleasure to buy immortality. Society provides a second line of defense against our natural impotence by creating a hero system that allows us to believe a hero system that allows us to believe we transcend death by participating in something of lasting worth.

4. Our desire for the best is the cause of the worst. We want to clean up the world , make it perfect. Our heroic projects that aimed at destroying evil have the paradoxical effect of bringing more evil into the world-my gods against your gods, my immortality project against your immortality project."

(from the preface of Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death)

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Veggies Men Need

Men need three one-cup servings of vegetables every day to stay healthy, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Here are five veggies to keep you fit.

Romain Lettuce. Dark-colored vegetables like romaine and spinach have a plethora of vitamins and minerals that improve electrolyte balance and speed recovery. Antioxidants in these foods block damaging effects of free radicals formed when tiny blood cells are crushed during workouts, and their electrolytes reduce cardiovascular stress.

Chard. Best for preventing heart disease. Guys who eat eight servings of veggies a day enjoy a 30 percent lower chance of having a heart attack than those who barely touch he stuff.

Broccoli Sprouts. They contain high doses of sulforaphane, a compound that increases production of antioxidant enzymes in airways.

Squash. Best for keeping your eyesight. Yellow squash contains three pigments that promote good vision. Lutein and sanguine scavenge the free radicals (unstable molecules born from pollution and stress, which can damage cells) that cause eye diseases such as cataracts, and beta-carotene (which converts to vitamin A, stored in the eye) is key for night vision.

Tomatoes. Best for staving off prostate cancer. They contain lycopene, which helps neutralize free radicals. The prostate happens to concentrate lycopene, and researchers think that helps protect against cancer.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Apprendre la mort

La mort et la pensée. La mort est radicalment impensable: un peut penser à la mort, sur la mort, mais non la mort elle-même. (Comme l'observait Kant, nul n'en peut faire l'expérience, et la pensée que "je ne suis pas" ne peut absolument exister.)

Le scandale de la mort. La mort étant donc proprement impensable, inconnaissable et incroyable, elle apparaît comme le scandale absolu.

L'angoisse de la mort. Incompréhensible, irreprésentable, la mort est par là même source d'angoisse. Pour lutter contre celle-ci l'homme adopte les attitude les plus diverses:

1) Fuir la mort en tentant de l'oublier dans les occupations et les plaisirs de la vie. C'est que Pascal nommait le "divertissement".

2) Se réfugier dans l'espérence d'une vie eternelle. C'est l'attitude religieuse.

3) Vaincre la peur qu'elle inspire.
- pour Épicure, c'est par ignorance que nous craignons la mort. Celle-ci, en effet, est un pur néant.
- pour les stoïciens, la mort est un processus nécessaire qu'il faut accepter et attendre avec sérénité. Montaigne: "philosopher c'est apprendre à mourir".

4) Refuser toute consolation et accepter sa dimension tragique.
- Selon Heidegger, l'homme est un être-pour-la-mort et l'angoisse qu'elle entraîne est la donnée essentielle de l'existance humaine. La refuser c'est dons refuser de vivre une vie authentiquement humaine.
- selon Camus, la grandeur de l'homme vient de ce qu'il s'élève sans cesse contre la mort en sachant qu'il sera vaincu par elle.

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Stuff I have learned today

Why the instinct to clutch a wounded part of the body helps relieve discomfort. "When you get input form many different signals. the brain increases the coherence of its body map, which reduces acute pain." More sensory input reduces pain.

What you say about others reveals a lot about you. A study revealed that college students who are more inclined to view their peers positively-as being trustworthy, nice and emotionally stable- reported greater life satisfaction, less depression, and better grades and test scores. On the other hand, those with negative opinions of others were more apt to be disagreeable, antisocial and narcissistic.

The careless generation. Nearly 75 percent of college students today rate themselves as less empathic than the average college student did 30 years ago. Probably because of the increases in social isolation and, surprise, because people read less fiction. The number of stories preschoolers read predicts their ability to understand the emotion of others; adults who read less are also less empathic.

Source: Scientific American Mind 2/11