The son of a co-worker (not a preacher man) shot this video for a story in the Kansas City Star about the Army’s new approach to basic training:
“A greater emphasis on stretching — then toughening “core” muscles in the torso, back and buttocks — reflects just a portion of the first formal changes to basic training in three decades.”
Long jogs and jumping jacks are out…stretching, reaching and sprinting are in. As in, how fast can you get from one side of a Baghdad steet to the other? Go!
Amazon: “Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius, a neuropsychologist and a neurologist and both practicing Buddhists, show us just how the brain programs us to experience the world a certain way by combining information from the external world with information held in neural pathways within the brain. These pathways operate in the background of our awareness, influencing our conscious mental activity.”
This book was a bit of a struggle for me so the following notes are intended for my own reference and make little sense outside the context of the book.
The self is like someone running behind a parade that is already well under way, continually calling out: “See what I created!” (pg 212)
In the brain, every manifestation of self is impermanent. The self is continually constructed, deconstructed, and constructed again. (pg 212)
We experience “now” not as a thin sliver of time in which each snapshot of experience appears sharply and ends abruptly, but as a moving interval roughly 1-3 seconds long that blurs and fades at each end. (pg 213)
At any moment, the parts of the self that are present depend on many factors, including genetic heritage, personal history, temperament, and situations. In particular, self depends on a lot of feeling tone of experience. When the feeling tone is neutral, the self tends to fade into the background. But as soon as something distinctly pleasant or unpleasant appears, the self quickly mobilizes. The self organizes around strong desires. Which comes first: Do “I” form a desire? Or does desire from and “I?” (pg 213)
The self has no inherent, unconditional, absolute existence apart from the network of causes it arises from, in, and as. (pg 213)
The self is truly a fictional character. (pg 214)
Best Fake Teabagger Signs at the Boston Common Tea Party » Via PlanetNelson.com
I think the creepy trumps the amusing on this classified ad. First question: What about the immortal remains of Bertrand Goforth? Does he have a new head stone? Why?
If my name is also Bertrand Goforth, won’t the dates be a little off?
Are they hoping someone named Bertran Goforth was buried without a marker, in hopes the family would find a deal like this down the road?
I’d really like to know if someone buys this… and why.
[Thanks to Joel for spotting this gem]
Learfield’s Jeff Martin makes work fun during United Way “volunteer day” a couple of years ago.
“The secret to Farmville’s popularity is neither gameplay nor aesthetics. Farmville is popular because in entangles users in a web of social obligations. When users log into Facebook, they are reminded that their neighbors have sent them gifts, posted bonuses on their walls, and helped with each others’ farms. In turn, they are obligated to return the courtesies. As the French sociologist Marcel Mauss tells us, gifts are never free: they bind the giver and receiver in a loop of reciprocity. It is rude to refuse a gift, and ruder still to not return the kindness.[11] We playFarmville, then, because we are trying to be good to one another. We play Farmville because we are polite, cultivated people.” — From an essay by y A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz
I’ve never played Farmville. Or any other Facebook game. I don’t have a Facebook account anymore and find myself unable to explain why I do not. So it’s hardly fair to use this thoughtful essay as an explanation. But the very essence of Facebook seems to be social obligation. I hate obligations and avoid them wherever possible.
Facebook/Farmville fans can tell me where Mr. Liszkiewicz misses the mark with his essay.
I’ve always wondered how deeply religious people could be so certain their “faith” was the real deal and everyone else’s was bogus. Brian Hines wonders, too:
“People will reject unsubstantiated claims in holy books… except the book they believe in. People will reject miracle stories… except miracles related by their own faith. People will reject the divinity of living prophets or messengers of God… except the person they accept as a genuine spiritual teacher.
Every religious believer, aside from the few who are genuinely open-minded, considers that he or she has found the One True Faith among the 4,199 or so false faiths. Yet how is this possible, logically or realistically?
It’s like Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegon, where all the children are above average.
There are good reasons for belonging to a religious, spiritual, or mystical group. But having a lock on cosmic truth isn’t one of them. Nobody knows what lies at the heart of reality, or even if there is such a thing: a heart, a core, a central truth.
So the only honest attitude is “I don’t know.” Along with, “You don’t know either.” This leaves us all on the same unknowing level.”
Papper: Radio News Does not Make Use of Social Media from Poynter Institute on Vimeo.
From Mashable: “Although Facebook and Twitter are popular with TV stations, only 27% of radio newsrooms use Twitter and 1% have a Facebook page. The survey’s conductor, Robert Papper of Hofstra University, said the contrast in usage is due to staff size. “If you had a staff of three or more, you were involved in a number of social networking things. If you did not hit that magic number you were not involved.” He explains why radio stations do not participate more in social media in the video clip above.”
As software has moved from running on local machines to running in the browser a number of important things have happened. One of the most important changes is software has become media.
Like other forms of media, software produces an emotional reaction when we use it. Software needs to have a “voice.” It needs to be more than a simple utility. We need to feel something when we use software. The best software does this incredibly well.
Like media, the interfaces that present software to us need to be stylized, designed, and elegant. Software can be beautiful and the best software is beautiful.
And like media, the most important measurement for software today is the number of engaged users. The more engaged users a piece of software has, the more impactful it can be.
Once we’ve begun to treat some of the software in our lives as media, we are going to treat all the software in our lives as media. And the software that is ugly, void of emotion and voice will not work as well for us. So I believe all software is media and will be seen as such by its users.