Our lives are littered with habits, some of them get us in trouble, most of them do us quite well, nearly all of them are brazenly invisible and that's what makes it so inviting to get into the habit for the changes we want to make. The thing is, we habitually avoid changing our habits, we have a great deal of aversion reaction to anyone trying to rock the even-keel boat of our same old used-to-be behaviours. But right there, there's the trick to this species of brain-hack: It's all in building on what is already ingrained, and it's that secret that both lets P&G sell gallons of de-scenting spray to conscientious homecleaners, and let's public health workers sell the use of simple life-saving bars of soap to third-world mothers:  read more »

Are you mathematical?

Let me put that another way: Do you like music? Because, inescapably, they are the same question, and the 'why' of that riddle has perplexed natural philosophers and musicians for at least 3 millenia. Of course our mathematics cannot really describe nature, but it is tantalizingly curious that nature should be even approximately describable by our humble equations, and for those curious about that "unknowing exercise of our mathematical faculties" we call 'music', Seed offers an intro article by Dmitri Tymoczko, discoverer of the bold new math of music, a short article one might call A Young Person's Guide to the Orbifold Quotient Space Theory of Music.

Read carefully, there will be an exam later ...  read more »

From Friday evening, a short video of our wedding ceremony, from the starting procession to the offerings of a drink to the faeries, sweetgrass for the cardinal spirits, tea for the parents of the bride and the beautiful song from Mike and Valierie. Set in the idyllic gardens at Rural Roots under the clear blue arc of the solstice sky accompanied by the birdsongs and rustling breeze. Best wedding I ever went to ...

May is attended by Rieko Sudo (also in kimono), and Paul Stewart and Rhoadie by me, with Karen Holgate, Sue Montgomery and Maureen Schmidt as May's bridesmaids and Nolan, Kaelin and Riordain are our attendents, Donna Andrew is our officiant, and with Mother Nature Dee Ashman holding it all together with her own very special magic.  read more »

And now a few words of wisdom from Michael Leunig:

On the bus, the smell of doom hung heavily in the air. At the office, the smell of doom! In the coffee shop, everywhere he went, the unmistakable smell of doom.

Even at home, at the dinner table, the all-pervasive inescapable smell of doom. And in his bedroom too, the appalling, repulsive smell of doom and gloom.

Then he noticed it was stuck to the bottom of his shoe.
He had trodden in it!

[ Michael Leunig ]

Some years ago I had this notion to test Frankincense. It was at Christmas time, and I just wondered if there may be something to it, some reason for including it so prominently in the pageants, and mostly after learning how the biblical kingdom known for producing the resin had never once been at war with anyone. In part I wondered if the strong and distinctive scent might become Pavlovianly linked to the Christmas season, but I also wondered if maybe the conditioning was also the other way around. I wondered if the psychotropic qualities of their chief export might have had an impact on their treaty negotiations.
In the science results today, it seems I was not the only one asking such questions:  read more »

on a cue from the IJG, Alan Watts speaks on Life and Music, brought to you by Parker and Stone:

Bird flu, or mad-cow? Appendicitis or salmonella? Childbirth or malnutrition? The Actuarials have a message for us: Trusting our gut-reaction sense of risk is, well, risky business ...

It's impossible to live a risk-free life: Everything we do increases some risks while lowering others. But if we understand our innate biases in the way we manage risks, we can adjust for them and genuinely stay safer -- without freaking out over every leaf of lettuce.
[ Daily Herald | Is lettuce really out to get you? ]

It's all a matter of perception, a certain kind of perception, one that doesn't include the 'me' part, a voluntary parting of the ways between the self that is me and the self that is doing the thing. Bill Morgan calls it an 'enculturalization", a key and formative part of any training, a part that is more myth than physical musculature reality:

No matter how high you jump, how fast you run or swim, how powerfully you row, you can do better. But sometimes your mind gets in the way. "All maximum performances are actually pseudo-maximum performances ... You are always capable of doing more than you are doing".

[cyclist Gina] Kolata recounts how this applies even to the everyday struggles of training: "I concentrated on my cadence, counting pedal strokes, thinking of nothing else. It worked. Now I know why. Dr. Morgan, who has worked with hundreds of subelite marathon runners, said every one had a dissociation strategy."
[ I'm Not Really Running ]  read more »