My fiancé doesn’t get it, but I love consuming educational/informational things. Shows, videos, documentaries; here are some good examples of these. Gaining information from an interesting, entertaining source is a win to me. I’d love to hear of some more sources if anyone has suggestions!
Discovery Science Channel’s “Through the Wormhole” Hosted by Morgan Freeman. Is amazing!
For anyone trying to send someone to a specific but undesignated spot on a google map, here’s a simple way to do it. It’d be nice if Google would allow you to draw and type on their maps or something, but oh well; maybe someday.
Simply right-click on the spot you’re interested in, select “What’s Here”, and you’ll get a nice green arrow along with location coordinates. You can now click the link button and send this map to someone. Not perfect, not robust, but it took me a while to figure it out, so hopefully this will save someone out there some time!
Yes, I know; I make light of some forms of self-help, but God dammit do I like it when a topic is given the scientific treatment!
After hitting a link I found in my google reader on the topic of our “primal posture” (also an informative watch, even if a little open-ended) I found myself hopscotched over to another TED talk about meditation. The twist in this one that caught my attention was that it was a talk given by a neuroscientist! Sara Lazar was her name. I’ll post the video below, but for those who like to cut to the chase, she’s found that meditation does in fact alter the physical structure of your brain.
This really does make me want to make time in my life to do some daily meditating. As someone with a constantly racing mind, I think I’d be one to notice some actual benefits.
To put the icing on the cake, here’s another good talk given by Andy Puddicombe who actually went out and became a Monk. Here he speaks simply about why it only makes sense to take care of your most important instrument, and how simple it can be to do so.
I don’t really go for a lot of mysticism, but when things have actually been studied, or they seem logical to me, I say it’s worth a shot. My next logical thought was “where would I begin?”. Well, Sara Lazar herself recommends the Center for Mindfulness’ Stress Reduction Program. But in the spirit of Puddicombe’s talk, I don’t think it pays to start with a high barrier to entry.
Personally, I’m going to start here and see where it takes me. Have any of you added meditation or similar practices to your lives? Has it helped? What is your regimen like? I’d love any and all input!
I Just learned this morning that Google is retiring it’s aptly named RSS feed reader, Google Reader. I had no idea this was coming! I know most people don’t use news readers these days (although they should, and I’m sure WOULD, if rss was a more promoted and more streamlined technology), but for some of [...]
Just an FYI for anyone following Next Level Thoughts: there will probably not be a new one until around March 25th because the fiancé and I have decided to do battle with the kitchen! Will post sooner if possible, but my equipment is currently under sheets, and can’t even be accessed remotely as my MacBook Air running Windows [...]
If the cool thing about your church is that it doesn’t buy into the bigoted and hateful parts of its holy book, doesn’t that say something about the book’s worth? If you’re cherry picking from the foundation of your belief system or interpreting it in a way that suits your lifestyle, couldn’t you just do [...]
Installing software, importing files, opening applications; they all take a certain amount of time. To allow you to gauge just how long you’ll be waiting for things to happen, operating systems and applications offer you the status bar. But what’s with all the false hope they’re giving us?! There’s always some extra little process at [...]
Don’t get me wrong; I’m subscribed to a number of self-help and posititvity blogs. Sometimes they contain some very helpful and interesting perspectives on life. But I can’t believe how often they all regurgitate the same pieces of advice repackaged and re-purposed into new articles with new titles. You can’t blame them really; there’s only so [...]
You’re all too familiar with this if you have a mind like mine. It never shuts up, and it always has some thought it feels is more important than the one it should be on. During a movie, I always find myself trying to figure out character names long after they’ve been introduced. Sometimes I make it [...]
Sometimes your day has its brakes on. Sometimes you’re on 4 hours’ sleep, and the day has its brakes on. Sometimes all you can do to stave off boredom and feel productive is switch between tasks and diversions over and over and over at ever increasing speeds. Then you you feel the need to illustrate [...]
On my drive home every evening I see this guy on a billboard ad for a local credit union. Is it just me, or is this guy just wearing everything on his sleeve? He insists, somehow, on being analyzed, and here are the traits I’ve astutely recognized. For those who don’t like to read JPGs, [...]
Get in on the ground floor while you can! I’m looking for investors… If I can turn this into a real system, I’ll be ROLLING IN IT! Cash that is; not pubes. Definitely.. not pubes. I was using a public washroom recently, and it hit me. “This place is Ghastly!” I thought to myself. Manscaping [...]
