Little kid rushes court of college basketball game

It's a wonder this doesn't happen more often.

"Where I work"

LinkedIn shows 50 desks of their most LinkedIn heavyweight users.

I like Richard Branson's office.   That looks productive.

Some other notables
Dan Ariely, David Cameron, Deepak Chopra, Peter Guber, Arianna Huffington, T. Boone Pickens, and many more.

Social networking is easy. Want to get 1,000,000 "Likes" on Facebook?

Just do what these girls (click here) did.

baguette me nots

From http://baguettemenots.tumblr.com/

 

How to defend yourself

http://youtu.be/Jeu6bXxTwfk

high school fire drill attends hockey game

The high school had a fire drill so they evacuated to the ice rink next door.   Some guys were having their weekly men's business league game.

Nadal's new wristwatch

Tourbillon RM 27-01 

$690,000

Rafael Nadal got a new watch, made by Richard Mille 

velcro strap not included. 

Affirmations are counterproductive?

Or take affirmations, those cheery slogans intended to lift the user’s mood by repeating them: “I am a lovable person!” “My life is filled with joy!” Psychologists at the University of Waterloo concluded that such statements make people with low self-esteem feel worse — not least because telling yourself you’re lovable is liable to provoke the grouchy internal counterargument that, really, you’re not.

 From "The Power of Negative Thinking", NYTIMES



more:

According to research by the psychologist Gabriele Oettingen and her colleagues, visualizing a successful outcome, under certain conditions, can make people less likely to achieve it. She rendered her experimental participants dehydrated, then asked some of them to picture a refreshing glass of water. The water-visualizers experienced a marked decline in energy levels, compared with those participants who engaged in negative or neutral fantasies. Imagining their goal seemed to deprive the water-visualizers of their get-up-and-go, as if they’d already achieved their objective.

Personally, negative thinking doesn't work very well for me in tennis.   Worrying about a doublefault creates one.   Picturing a good serve creates a good serve.

Q Lazarus

Screen grab from Philadelphia.   

Q Lazarus, I wonder what you're doing now.    Well, at least you can be proud to have been part of so many good movies, mystery singer.

Cheerful "Losing My Religion"

Want to hear an upbeat version of REM's Losing My Religion?    Here it is in a major key.



Major Scaled #2 : REM - "Recovering My Religion" from major scaled on Vimeo.

Narcisism is still a personality disorder

The DSM (diagnostic manual) considered eliminating Narcisistic Personality Disorder from DSM-V.
 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20853916

But they ended up leaving it in.

Want to see if you have NPD?   Take this test:  Some of these questions are pretty funny.   Don't panic if you answer yes to many of them  -- we're all a bit narcissist.

Narcissus - Michelangelo Caravaggio

OK go find my DNA map

If you anonymously submit your DNA to an online study, there are folks who can figure out your identity and the identity of your relatives.

NY Times: 'Anonymous' Online DNA Not So Anonymous

So I figure it's only a matter of time before the inverse happens:  you know my name, go find my DNA and tell me what medical maladies await me.

14 wonderful words with no english equivalent

http://theweek.com/article/index/238751/14-wonderful-words-with-no-english-equivalent

I like this one

13. Greng-jai (Thai)That feeling you get when you don't want someone to do something for you because it would be a pain for them.

It's ok to say drug addiction again.

The new DSM (psychiatrist's Diagnostic Guide) has OK'd the use of the word addiction again.   So, it's not drug dependency, it's drug addiction.    LINK

The argument for this change was made back in 2006 in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Go outside and holler

Step outside and holler.   See who hollers back.    This one was taped in Sweden.

Reminds me of some guy who did this on a nightly basis at Ft. Bragg.  Hooo Yah.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c26_1357935775&p=1

Pinball Hall of Fame

Now I have to go back to Las Vegas

http://www.pinballmuseum.org/

All the games are $0.25 or $0.50

George Sanders was bored

George Sanders, actor, (and Zsa Zsa Gabor's 3rd husband) left this suicide note in 1972, age 65

Dear World,

I am leaving because I am bored.  I feel I have lived long enough.  I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool.

Good Luck.

Life is a marathon

Most of us are going to live a long time.   Not necessarily jumping around on trampolines the whole time, either.

"Reflecting the vitality of an Olympic year, we consider life like a Marathon, presenting the latest scientific thinking about increasing human longevity in terms of trends, training and persistence.   "

About The RSA

The RSA: meeting 21st century challenges by showcasing ideas, undertaking innovative research and building civic capacity around the world. To learn more about the RSA, visit: thersa.org   (full list of videos here)

notes:
30% of men age 85 up can do ALL activities of daily living, including budgeting, shopping, cooking.   Fewer women can, even though they live longer.

Babies born in England today (and I guess the USA) have avg life expectancy above 100.

"Olympian is an anagram for Olym PAIN"  -- Simon Mason (Olympic field hockey goalkeeper)    the "best laid plans can still lead to injury".    "Nobody puts on a pair of shoes and goes out to run without a goal."    "If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you've always got."   If you think by just by walking around the the block every day, you'll continue to get physical results, it won't.   The body adapts."

Freud's take on romantic love

“the overestimation of the erotic object,”

Freud, Sexuality and the Psychology of Love

Luciano Berio: Sinfonia

Modern Classical Music. From 1969. "Nothing more restful than chamber music" -- which this is definitely not. Let me know how much of it you listen to. Personally I love this. Please hold your applause until the end.



playlist Luciano Berio: "Sinfonia" conducted by Pierre Boulez LINK

Martina on Portlandia

Martina Navratilova appearance on Portlandia

Kubrick on meaning

13th century painter predicts Lehman Bros crash

I’ve come to think that, even a continent away, and at the distance of seven hundred years, it is possible to see the first slight tremblings of the Lehman Brothers crash in this tiny painting of a mother and her child.

from The Unexpected Double History of Banking and The Art World
Don’t click that link unless you want a load of bull.   And no pictures.   I had to dig the picture up from the Met’s webpage.

Corporations in the carpool lane

“Corporations are people, my friend … of course they are. [….] Human beings, my friend.”  — Mitt Romney

‘If Corporations Are People, Can They Ride In The Carpool Lane?’

Section 470 of the California Vehicle Code defines a person as “natural person, firm, co-partnership, association, limited liability company, or corporation.”

Decayed Daguerotypes

from
http://publicdomainreview.org/2013/01/08/decayed-daguerreotypes/

Put your hands together

https://www.goodjoe.com/stores/61-jesuit-volunteer-corps
Jesuit Volunteers directly serve the poor and marginalized in the U.S. and developing countries. For a year or more Jesuit Volunteers live simply, in community, immersed in Ignatian Spirituality. The experience opens the JV to be conscious of the poor, attuned to the causes of social injustice, and dedicated to service informed by faith. The Jesuit Volunteer Corps helps Former Jesuit Volunteers nurture this orientation throughout their lives.
Nice shirt, to show them a bit of support.

Carl Jung correspondence with Bill W.

Bill W. (AA co-founder) letter to psychologist Carl Jung thanking him for his influence on those starting the AA movement.

if there was any other hope, you told him that there might be, provided he could become the subject of a spiritual or religious experience - in short, a genuine conversion.

http://silkworth.net/aahistory/billw_carljung012361.html
Jung’s response

An ordinary man, not protected by an action from above and isolated in society, cannot resist the power of evil, which is called very aptly the Devil.
Spiritus contra spiritum (spirit to defeat spirits)

http://silkworth.net/aahistory/carljung_billw013061.html

more Duane Michals

Duane Michals, more

Duane Michals, photographer

He shot this album cover

his webpage

Hopper’s “House by the Railroad”

This was the first painting the MOMA ever acquired.   They still have it.   They don’t display it though.

As long as I'm here, here's some bonus Hopper.   This photographer composites models into dioramas he's built to reenact Hopper's paintings:   Richard Tuschman (website)

F**kin guy on a f**kin cruise ship

F**kin guy on a f**kin cruise ship.   Makes me want to f**kin do that too.

Studying consciousness

These are quotes from this article: 
Awakening.   by Joshua Lang, Atlantic Magazine.

Sevoflurane is a multipurpose gaseous wonder, making it one of the most commonly used general anesthetics in the United States today—even though anesthesiologists are still relatively clueless as to how it produces unconsciousness.

We can’t figure out whether patients are awake, or what being awake even means?

As a teenager … Tononi wrote a letter to Karl Popper, a famous European philosopher, asking him whether he should devote his life to studying consciousness. Popper wrote back with encouragement and sent an inscribed copy of one of his books. Tononi considered approaching the subject through mathematics or philosophy, but ultimately decided that medicine would provide the best foundation. So he attended medical school

One takeaway:
A human has about 100 billion brain cells.   If we were astronomers of our own brains, we would be overwhelmed like Sagan.

2nd takeaway:
I’m happy to continue to repress any memories of pain in surgery.   Hypnotize me to rediscover those traumas?  No thanks.

If I’m in NYC on a friday eve w/o any tix?

K2 Lounge

Every Friday night Serai becomes the K2 Lounge, offering a special Pan-Asian tapas menu along with a martini and wine bar to accompany the evening’s DJ, thematic gallery tours, and programs.
it’s inside the

Rubin Museum of Art, in Chelsea.   

The museum is dedicated to the art of the Himalayas, and in this case that term has a broad geographical reach, stretching all the way from India to Mongolia. You won’t find such a wide array of art from Tibet, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Burma in one place anywhere else in this hemisphere.

Quartet for the End of Time

French composer Olivier Messiaen wrote this while imprisoned in Stalag VIIIA German prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz in the winter of 1941.

http://grooveshark.com/album/Quartet+For+The+End+Of+Time/2623576  (grooveshark playlist)

Music unchained, born in a Nazi prison.   How in the world.

almost a cool tee shirt

Kurama Sake by ~TeegKetchen on deviantART
the sake part I like.   Naruto animal on a shirt, not so much.

Pictures You Can Understand

The Famous Artists Course defines Commercial Illustration:

"Commercial illustration" means — pictures you can understand.

(Their underlining, not mine.   Source: an art course book from the 1950's)

Thomas Friedman artificial intelligence

 

Thomas Friedman op ed generator

This automatic column writing software is uncanny how it can mimic a Thomas Friedman column. It’s what makes America great. I was talking with a ferry operator in Karachi who said the same thing.

Make your own mozzarella cheese

http://heart-hands-home.blogspot.com/2011/01/homemade-mozzarella-cheese.html

more about my distrust of big pharma

Washington Post Article:  “As drug industry’s influence over research grows, so does the potential for bias”

The New England Journal of Medicine is not alone in featuring research sponsored in large part by drug companies — it has become a common practice that reflects the growing role of industry money in research.
….
 overlooked.”   A Food and Drug Administration scientist later estimated that the drug had been associated with 83,000 heart attacks and deaths.

healthy in a sick world?

 Jiddu Krishnamurti Maybe. But still it beats the alternative: being sick in a profoundly sick society.