When I have a morning at home alone I work on my lists and I fall into my practice more easily.  The sun is streaming in and I am doing triage on piles of "urgent" items which have become buried under a stream of distractions and amusements like my nonstop study of public health.  One observation this morning is that the strong balancing poses which I find so elusive when surrounded by empty air and other students are more accessible when I am alone in my office.  Here I can step into a warrior 3 knowing that the sunny windowsill is right there to hold me up, and yet confidently not needing it.  This strength and balance that I find in my own small office is something I would like to take with me into the world.

Cocaine and booze
are the eggs and bacon
of the addict's world,
the perfect combination.
--Ozzy Osbourne
(in The Week 7/4/14 p8)

The religion of one age
is the literary entertainment
of the next.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I haven't watched much TV in this life. It's because my family moved to Austria when I was 12, and I was broken of the young habit. When I returned at age 16, I couldn't believe how inane TV was. I could sit through it, but the most fascinating part for me was always the advertising. What are they selling, and how? If anyone hands me a remote control, to this day, the OFF button is where I'm going. I've been known to unplug people's TV's when they weren't looking, and to futz with the controls to make it hard to get back to their program. But I have a confession. Now that I am living in a city where I STILL don't have any close friends, my best friends are on the radio and the internet. And the two shows that I watch on Hulu both feature men who are cynical and adept at seeing through people (House and Lightman). I don't own a TV, but I have two computers and a wireless network. I just ran across a composite clip that simulates a conversation between the two men, and it cracked me up. ( If you don't know the characters, this will bore you.Collapse )

(but not associated with anxiety)

"People who are susceptible to depression are already more prone to social isolation and withdrawal and therefore more likely to develop problematic Internet usage because the Internet provides an outlet for them," Dr. Christakis observed. "So the findings from the study are highly plausible, and because it was longitudinal and adjusted for baseline levels of depression and Internet use, the findings are both novel and robust."
( notes from medscape articleCollapse )

Researchers at the Ochsner Health System in Baton Rouge, Louisiana analyzed 14 years of data ('93-'06) on 120,000 people, adjusted for smoking and obesity, and discovered that just plain old sitting is a major health risk. Six or more hours a day on the keester causes women to have a 37% higher risk of dying compared with women who sat 3 hours or less. The difference in death risk between 3 and 6 hours sitting among men was only 17%. ...people who sat a lot and did not exercise or stay active had an even higher mortality risk: 94% for women and 48% for men.
( SOURCESCollapse )

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
--Voltaire

Pixar's latest release...we just saw it. It's getting four stars in lots of different reviews, but in my rating system it gets a 3 or less. The story is cute: widower's house gets surrounded by city, his dead wife didn't get to do her childhood dream, he feels dissatisfied and is unwilling to "retire" in a "home". So he hooks up his house to a bunch of helium baloons and flies away, house and all, headed for South America where his dead wife's dream can be completed. Probably the best thing about the movie was the spunk of the old man. A boyscout looking for his "helping an elder" badge stows away of the flying house, and they end up having unbelievable and somewhat stupid adventures together in South America, beating the badguys by the skin of their teeth, and returning stateside to claim the coveted service to elder boyscout badge. It's touching, and the story is coherent, but it was for me too outrageous, or silly, or something. It lost me early on. I stuck through the whole show but I don't exactly recommend it. Pixar has made better movies. At least it isn't immoral.