biology
Tabula Rasa
From Wikipedia:
Tabula rasa is the epistemological thesis that individuals are born without built-in mental content and that their knowledge comes from experience and perception. Generally proponents of the tabula rasa thesis favour the “nurture” side of the nature versus nurture debate, when it comes to aspects of one’s personality, social and emotional behaviour, and intelligence. The term in Latin equates to the English “blank slate” (which refers to writing on a slate sheet in chalk) but comes from the Roman tabula or wax tablet, used for notes, which was blanked by heating the wax and then smoothing it to give a tabula rasa.
Of course, this debate has since taken a different route as put forth here by the inimitable Evelyn Fox Keller. All quite interesting enough.
Honey, it really works
When I first moved away from Alaska nearly 5 years ago, there was one thing I wasn’t anticipating having to deal with: allergies. For years I was allergy-free living in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. That all changed quickly upon making my new home in the Middle West.
I tried over-the-counter remedies, which left me feeling speedy and just “off” until one of my pals told me about the solution: locally made honey.
Honey has anti-microbial properties and has for centuries been used for medicinal purposes of all sorts, including as a dressing for serious wounds. It’s also high in antioxidants and tastes real good on cereals, in sauces, lemonade and all kinds of stuff. Still, the most interesting use I’ve ever heard of for honey is as a natural remedy for seasonal allergies. According to various natural health practitioners, pollen found in locally-grown raw honey works over time to desensitize the body to allergens much like traditional allergy shots work.
It’s working for me. The season so far has been allergy-free, even amidst rumblings from pals that it is unseasonably allergy-ish, and I would like to thank the East Side Co-op for selling multiple varieties of the stuff – it’s saved my sanity and made my summer completely enjoyable again. Thanks, bees and beekeepers out there : )
The Man’s Guide to Love
All over the country, these folks have been asking men:
“If you had one piece of advice that you’d give another man about love, what would it be?â€
Click the photo to see and listen to their answers:
Neil Postman: Education as a Cure for Stupidity (Part I)
Who is Neil Postman?
Wanna watch more? I sure did. Click here.
Ken Burns on filmmaking
If you wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer or a feature film I could tell you the steps to take to do that, but every working documentary filmmaker I know has gotten there through their own unique path. There is no career path.
Dakar
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As I write this, I am taking meds to fight off malaria. I am leaving for Dakar this morning for a week and the meds are a final, though ongoing, step in a series of vaccines administered to me en masse (The first of two rounds knocked me for a loop for a week. I had not ever felt that kind of energy depletion as my body immediately began building up antigens, fighting off the militia of micro-infections introduced into it) in preparation for the trip. The bottle told me to start taking them two days before entering the malaria risk zone. It says to take with food. It says to take them with plenty of water. It says to take one every day I am in the malaria risk zone. It says to continue taking them for 4 weeks after I return.
I should be surprised at the types of reactions I get upon telling others where I am headed and what steps I have have been required to take in order to be eligible to go, but I cannot say that I am, given the current mode of the media, especially in the West, full of anger and fear, some justified, though mostly misguided. The information given out at the infectious disease center is intimidating enough to make many change their travel plans. I have heard stories from others about these malaria meds who have experienced nightmares throughout the prescribed duration. This is all to say that the general culture in the developed world effectively conditions us to be afraid of anything that poses even the slightest amount of risk – and there are plenty of excuses around for us to use and give in to it.
Before today, I have not stepped foot upon the continent of Africa. I honestly do not know what I am expecting. When I think of Africa, the only images and ideas that come to mind are not my own. They are the images and sounds of films, emblazoned with romance and exotic, timeless beauty or violence and timeless unrest. Then there are the various agendas of the associated news agencies and television ad campaigns to raise money for the developing world, full of images chosen exclusively for their compelling attributes. All told, a polarized mix of love and hate, reverence and fear.
There are many ways of interpreting those messages. Realities are ethereal things, existential and elusive. They are relative, just like the physical. Like biology. What constitutes a cold to one person, requiring a trip to the doctor, may be just a sniffle to another. So they wait it out and in a couple of days they are just fine.
I do not know what we will eat there or if the water will agree with us. I do not know how I will fare in the heat of the day while filming the team. I do not even know if there will be enough electricity to power the equipment I will be using to shoot. I have learned what little I can about the region from what is posted on the CIA’s World Fact Book and related sites about the history, populations, languages, political and economic stability of the region. The work of Ben Herson, Democracy in Dakar, is some of the more current, compelling and poignant information out there and I am thankful for it – the struggle of the Senegalese people, politically similar to that in other regions of the world, is set apart by the conditions under which they muster the spirit to persevere in order to bring change and any improvement in their quality of life. How they manage to create such beautifully compelling art amidst such adversity and poor living conditions is a triumph in and of itself.
I do know that I feel a sense of mystique about it, having been so glorified by my own culture as a key piece of the anthropological record and also demonized for the strange differences of culture hidden within it. Is it natural for us to fear or discount what we do not understand? My culture has made the same mistakes as those that have gone before it – including insulating its people with convenience and luxury, softening minds and hardening hearts.
Naturally, I am invigorated by the idea of leaving these burdens behind if only for a few days. The mere thought of what it will be like to see, taste, smell, hear and feel Dakar for myself stirs butterflies of the best kind within. However, I am clumsy the way others are graceful. My only concern about the journey is making some bumbling move or inadvertently inconsiderate statement relating to something I take for granted in front of our less fortunate hosts. A good solution for this: I am focused on doing more listening and less talking, which should serve us all well. Being behind a camera lends itself to this.
The trip will mean something different to each of us on the team, though our primary goals are the same. One of the goals is clear: to move us out of the comfortable security of an illusion of our own design about the world. As I have said, the team is coming from a place of extraordinary comfort when compared to that of our hosts and our own struggles will be put promptly into new perspective. The other goal is to contribute to the construction of a house on behalf of Habitat for Humanity, which will power our third goal to create in the process a documentary of the journey, both for posterity and for the benefit of Habitat to use to promote their own future efforts. Our work shall leave an indelible impact on all of us.
In the case of the few who believe such a humble contribution is equivalent to a screw falling out of a deck chair off the back of the Queen Mary, they may have have a point of merit, given the obstacles between what is right and fair in the world and the sad fact that justice does not always prevail. Nonetheless, there are those who give up and those who, in the presence of great adversity, continue to do what they can to push the world to a better place. This is in line with something I read in my only surface-scratching study of the region’s primary religion – Islam:
None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself – Number 13 of Imam – Al-Nawawi’s Forty Hadiths
Such thoughts are small changes in thought which act as catalysts for larger ones. Through subtle shifts in our perceptions we are able then to move forward in bigger ways that would not have been possible without them. Whether we like it or not, as tough as they often are to initiate, these small changes are the stuff. Moving ourselves out of our comfort zones is arguably the only way to growth, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, physically and metaphysically. The metaphor of dropping of a pebble into the glass stillness of a lake is spot on here: the ripples fan out towards shore, bringing with it perhaps a nourishing drink that makes it just far enough up onto the shore to provide a drink for a flower that may have otherwise perished were it not for a timely, though seemingly insignificant, toss. These are the risks that have value, that have the potential to produce beauty. Without taking risks, we risk living life without beauty. Beauty in our ability to be generous. Patient. Tolerant. Alive, curious and excited to learn about the myriad of things we do not know or have only heard of.
I raise my glass to anyone reading this with my most sincere wishes that all our travels, wherever they take us, may nurture and raise our understanding to new pinnacles and give us fresh vantage points from which we are naturally inclined to take less and less of our life and times together for granted.
Latcho drom.
Michael Pollan and The Botany of Desire
Author Michael Pollan says:
The tulip, by gratifying our desire for a certain kind of beauty, has gotten us to take it from its origins in Central Asia and disperse it around the world. Marijuana, by gratifying our desire to change consciousness, has gotten people to risk their lives, their freedom, in order to grow more of it and plant more of it. The potato, by gratifying our desire for control, control over nature so that we can feed ourselves has gotten itself out of South America and expanded its range far beyond where it was 500 years ago. And the apple, by gratifying our desire for sweetness begins in the forests of Kazakhstan and is now the universal fruit. These are great winners in the dance of domestication.
The Rules
I was reading Michael Dahn’s blog the other day and found this particularly worth re-posting here:
“We can only lose what we cling to!â€
– BuddhaMany of us live by a set of beliefs accumulated over the course of our lifetime. We use these rules to navigate the possibilities of life. Some of them are positive rules that save us (e.g. “Don’t touch a hot stoveâ€) but some of them are limiting (e.g. “I can’t do it. It’s too hardâ€). Sometimes we have to stop and ask ourselves if the limitations in our life are self-imposed or actual. I believe that many times the rules by which we find ourselves constrained are self-imposed.
When life appears to be unfair, when bad things happen to good people, this is when you have the opportunity to give up or to change the rules of the game. It’s these game changing moves that enable you to conquer your fears in new and creative ways. You can change the rules of the game in several ways, here are but a few:
1. Change your beliefs: I live by the mantra that “nothing is impossible, the impossible just takes longer.†Why is it that we limit ourselves by what we think is impossible? Why do we obey the rules of our belief when our opponent does not? Why is it that we enable others to walk over us? Only by changing your belief can you break down the barriers that you have constructed and consider the possibility of out-of-the-box innovation.
2. Change the rules: In life many of us abide by a path that we feel has been laid our for us or is predestined to occur. We get frustrated when we feel deviations from that path in the same way we feel the rumble strip on the edge of the road. These path barriers move us in a direction that we “feel†is the “right path.†We cling to our path because it has been a part of us for so many years. Only when you accept variance in your path are you free and open to new possibilities. By accepting change and alternative outcomes we free ourselves to new futures and alternative happiness.When we stop clinging to self-imposed beliefs and prescriptive paths we free within ourselves the possibility of the impossible.
Here are a few new rules that you may want to consider.
1. “Be the change you want to see in the world.†– Mahatma Gandhi
2. Do Something
3. “To thine own self be true.†– Shakespeare
4. Our lives are the stories we tell ourselves.
5. Don’t live by anyone else’s rules, go make your own.
Humans Swimming
Are you a human? Do you like to swim? How about free-diving? How about static free diving?
Salt
From Wikipedia: Chloride and sodium ions, the two major components of salt, are necessary for the survival of all known living creatures, including humans. Salt is involved in regulating the water content (fluid balance) of the body.
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Flow = Attention deconcentration?
It comes up around nearly every turn. It’s one of the wobbles of life that leads us into such ideas repeatedly: Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Proposed by Mihály CsÃkszentmihályi, the positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.
Jason Kottke posted an excellent article today that is relevant and timely:
It’s a bummer that Alec Wilkinson’s article on free diving isn’t available online (except for NYer subscribers)…it’s fascinating and right up the alley of the relaxed concentration/deliberate practice enthusiast. One of the two divers profiled uses a technique called attention deconcentration to govern her body and mind as she dives.
To still the unbidden apprehensions that might interfere with her dive — what she describes as “the subjective feeling of empty lungs at the deep” — Molchanova uses a technique that she refers to as “attention deconcentration.” (“They get it from the military,” Ericson said.) Molchanova told me, “It means distribution of the whole field of attention — you try to feel everything simultaneously. This condition creates an empty consciousness, so the bad thoughts don’t exist.”
“Is it difficult to learn?”
“Yes, it’s difficult. I teach it in my university. It’s a technique from ancient warriors — it was used by samurai — but it was developed by a Russian scientist, Oleg Bakhtiyarov, as a psychological-state-management technique for people sho do very monotonous jobs.”
I asked if it was like meditation.
“To some degree, except meditation means you’re completely free, but if you’re in the sea at depth you will have to be focused, or it will get bad. What you do to start learning is you focus on the edges, not the center of things, as if you were looking at a screen. Basically, all the time I am diving, I have an empty consciousness. I have a kind of melody going through my mind that keeps me going, but otherwise I am completely not in my mind.”
I found only one other reference online to attention deconcentration, an article on free diving written by Natalia Molchanova herself. In it, she talks about the three types of attention deconcentration: visual, aural, and tactile.
Rising from the depth, it is important to constantly scan your condition to prevent shallow water black-out, which can occur without any discomfort sensations. Somatic attention deconcentration appears to be extremely useful in this situation. Somatic AD implies attention distribution on the whole volume of the body and allows noticing tiny changes of organism state.
There is one more kind of AD — aural attention deconcentration. It is not so effective in the water, but it helps preparing to the dive and not to be distracted by judge’s countdown.
It’s interesting that both the attention deconcentration and flow techniques are designed to get the practitioner to basically the same place (i.e. ready to perform difficult tasks) from opposite directions.
Cheers, Jason – thanks for this one.
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Overlooked : Slackers in Nature
Earlier this morning, Tim O’Reilly tweeted about this research published in the NYT and I am so completely fascinated and thus fixated on it today:
Dr. Dornhaus is breaking new ground in her studies of whether the efficiency of ant society, based on a division of labor among ant specialists, is important to their success. To do that, she said, “I briefly anesthetized 1,200 ants, one by one, and painted them using a single wire-size brush, with model airplane paint  Rally Green, Racing Red, Daytona Yellow.â€Â
After recording their behavior with two video cameras aiming down on an insect-size stage, she analyzed 300 hours of videotape of the ants in action. She discovered behavior more worthy of Aesop’s grasshopper than the proverbial industrious ants.
“The specialists aren’t necessarily good at their jobs,†she said. “And the other ants don’t seem to recognize their lack of ability.â€Â
Dr. Dornhaus found that fast ants took one to five minutes to perform a task  collecting a piece of food, fetching a sand-grain stone to build a wall, transporting a brood item  while slow ants took more than an hour, and sometimes two. And she discovered that about 50 percent of the other ants do not do any work at all. In fact, small colonies may sometimes rely on a single hyperactive overachiever.
Why do some worker ants lean on their shovels and let the rest of the workers do all the work? “It’s like students living together  you’ll always find one will have a lower threshold for doing the washing up and will end up always doing it all,†she said.
It’s amazing it took us so long to figure this out – what with all the ant farms we’ve been watching for years and years. No one seemed to notice the slackers until now. Perhaps, they’re there for their personalities, for keeping morale up, or maybe for some other brutally apparent reason that we won’t notice for another hundred years?
Maybe they’re just slackers.
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Here’s the [Beef] Genome
![thinfilms beef cattle Heres the [Beef] Genome](http://www.devon.gov.uk/beef_cattle.gif)
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 24, 2009
The genomes of man and dog have been joined in the scientific barnyard by the genome of the cow, an animal that walked beside them on the march to modern civilization.
A team of hundreds of scientists working in more than a dozen countries yesterday published the entire DNA message — the genome — of an 8-year-old female Hereford living at an experimental farm in Montana.
Hidden in her roughly 22,000 genes are hints of how natural selection sculpted the bovine body and personality over the past 60 million years, and how man greatly enhanced the job over the past 10,000.
As with other species, genes governing the immune system, the metabolism of nutrients and social interaction appear to be where much of the evolutionary action has occurred. The result is an animal that lives peacefully in herds and grows large on low-quality food, thanks to the billions of bacteria it carries around.
Selective breeding has exaggerated and spread some of those traits, producing hyper-passive Holsteins and muscle-bound Belgian Blues, and dozens of humpbacked breeds that combine characteristics of both.
Diversity
One of the greatest things about living in a city like Barcelona is the great diversity present in the streets. Not only do we hear Catalán, Spanish and their relatives, but also French, Italian, Turkish, German and occasionally English.
So goes the joke:
What do you call someone who speaks three languages?
Trilingual
What do you call someone who speaks two languages?
Bilingual
What do you call someone who speaks one language?
American
It is this diversity that makes a collective culture so rich and satisfying in a way that words aren’t able to convey.
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