Alan Watts : Beat Zen

“[...]the Westerner who is attracted by Zen and who would understand it deeply must have one indispensable qualification: he must understand his own culture so thoroughly that he is no longer swayed by its premises unconsciously. He must really have come to terms with the Lord God Jehovah and with his Hebrew-Christian conscience so that he can take it or leave it without fear or rebellion. He must be free of the itch to justify himself. Lacking this, his Zen will be either "beat" or "square," either a revolt from the culture and social order or a new form of stuffiness and respectability. For Zen is above all the Liberation of the mind from conventional thought, and this is something utterly different from rebellion against convention, on the one hand, or adopting foreign conventions, on the other.”

“The point is simply that people who feel a profound need to justify themselves have difficulty in understanding the viewpoints of those who do not, and the Chinese who created Zen were the same kind of people as Lao-Tzu, who, centuries before, said, "Those who justify themselves do not convince." For the urge to make or prove oneself right has always jiggled the Chinese sense of the ludicrous, since as both Confucians and Taoists-however different these philosophies in other ways-they have invariably appreciated the man who can "come off it." ”

Article

Tea > Water

Drinking three or more cups of tea a day is as good for you as drinking plenty of water and may even have extra health benefits, say researchers.

“Tea replaces fluids and contains antioxidants so its got two things going for it.”

Article

Seth Godin: Who is easily manipulated?

Sometimes (and too often) marketers work to manipulate people. I define manipulation as working to spread an idea or generate an action that is not in a person's long-term best interest.

The easiest people to manipulate are those that don't demand a lot of information, are open to messages from authority figures and are willing to make decisions on a hunch, particularly if there's a promise of short-term gains.

If you want to focus on the short run and sell something, get a vote or gather a mob, the easiest place to start is with populations that leave themselves open to manipulation.

There are habits and activities that leave people open to manipulation. I'm not saying they are wrong or right, just pointing out that these behaviors make you open to being manipulated...

Article

The surprising truth about heroin and addiction

“[...]what the psychologist Bruce Alexander calls "the myth of drug-induced addiction" is still widely accepted in the case of heroin -- and, by extension, the drugs compared to it -- because moderate opiate users are hard to find. That does not mean they don't exist; indeed, judging from the government's survey results, they are a lot more common than addicts. It's just that people who use opiates in a controlled way are inconspicuous by definition, and keen to remain so.”

Article

Seth Godin: The lizard brain

We say we want one thing, then we do another. We say we want to be successful but we sabotage the job interview. We say we want a product to come to market, but we sandbag the shipping schedule. We say we want to be thin but we eat too much. We say we want to be smart but we skip class or don't read that book the boss lent us.

The contradictions never end. When someone shows up and acts without contradiction, we're amazed. When an athlete just does the sport, or when a writer just writes the words, we can't help but watch, astonished at the purity of their actions. Why is it so difficult to do what we say we're going to do?

The lizard brain.

Article

Bertrand Russell said (almost) all there is to be said

Back in 1927, before atheism became so mainstream that it got its own t-shirt, Bertrand Russell was kicking Christianity's ass in his spare time.

What I particularly like about this essay :

1. It is still as valid and relevant as it was a century ago.
2. Essentially all the points Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens et al made a splash with a few years ago, boiled down to a few paragraphs.
3. Delivered in a matter-of-fact, casual way, devoid of the modern day atheist polemic.
4. Does n't try to convince anyone that religious belief is irrational. I simply assumes it to be.
5. Doesn't give religion more credit than it is due, either implicitly or explicitly.
6. Doesn't assume an offensive, or defensive position.

Five Tips for Making Ideas Happen

Article

The best excerpt from Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers"

The particular skill that allows you to talk your way out of a murder rap, or convince your professor to move you from the morning to the afternoon section, is what the psychologist Robert Sternberg calls "practical intelligence". To Sternberg, practical intelligence includes things like "knowing what to say to whom, knowing when to say it, and knowing how to say it for maximum effect." It is procedural: it is about knowing how to do something without necessarily knowing why you know it or being able to explain it. It's practical in nature: that is, it's not knowledge for its own sake. It's knowledge that helps you read situations correctly and get what you want. And, critically, it is a kind of intelligence separate from the sort of analytical ability measured by IQ.

To use the technical term, general intelligence and practical intelligence are "orthogonal": the presence of one doesn't imply the presence of the other. You can have lots of analytical intelligence and very little practical intelligence, or lots of practical intelligence and not much analytical intelligence, or—as in the lucky case of someone like Robert Oppenheimer—you can have lots of both. So where does something like practical intelligence come from? We know where analytical intelligence comes from. It's something, at least in part, that's in your genes. Chris Langan started talking at six months. He taught himself to read at three years of age. He was born smart. IQ is a measure, to some degree, of innate ability. But social savvy is knowledge. It's a set of skills that have to be learned. It has to come from somewhere, and the place where we seem to get these kinds of attitudes and skills is from our families.

Perhaps the best explanation we have of this process comes from the sociologist Annette Lareau, who a few years ago conducted a fascinating study of a group of third graders. She picked both blacks and whites and children from both wealthy homes and poor homes, zeroing in, ultimately, on twelve families. Lareau and her team visited each family at least twenty times, for hours at a stretch. She and her assistants told their subjects to treat them like "the family dog," and they followed them to church and to soccer games and to doctor's appointments, with a tape recorder in one hand and a notebook in the other.

You might expect that if you spent such an extended period in twelve different households, what you would gather is twelve different ideas about how to raise children: there would be the strict parents and the lax parents and the hyperinvolved parents and the mellow parents and on and on. What Lareau found, however, is something much different. There were only two parenting "philosophies," and they divided almost perfectly along class lines. The wealthier parents raised their kids one way, and the poorer parents raised their kids another way. The wealthier parents were heavily involved in their childrens' free time, shuttling them from one activity to the next, quizzing them about their teachers and coaches and teammates. One of the well-off children Lareau followed played on a baseball team, two soccer teams, a swim team, and a basketball team in the summer, as well as playing in an orchestra and taking piano lessons. That kind of intensive scheduling was almost entirely absent from the lives of the poor children. Play for them wasn't soccer practice twice a week. It was making up games outside with their siblings and other kids in the neighborhood. What a child did was considered by his or her parents as something separate from the adult world and not particularly consequential.

One girl from a working-class family—Katie Brindle—sang in a choir after school. But she signed up for it herself and walked to choir practice on her own. Lareau writes: What Mrs. Brindle doesn't do that is routine for middle class mothers is view her daughter's interest in singing as a signal to look for other ways to help her develop that interest into a formal talent. Similarly Mrs. Brindle does not discuss Katie's interest in drama or express regret that she cannot afford to cultivate her daughter's talent. Instead she frames Katie's skills and interests as character traits—singing and acting are part of what makes Katie "Katie." She sees the shows her daughter puts on as "cute" and as a way for Katie to "get attention."

The middle-class parents talked things through with their children, reasoning with them. They didn't just issue commands. They expected their children to talk back to them, to negotiate, to question adults in positions of authority. If their children were doing poorly at school, the wealthier parents challenged their teachers. They intervened on behalf of their kids. One child Lareau follows just misses qualifying for a gifted program. Her mother arranges for her to be retested privately, petitions the school, and gets her daughter admitted. The poor parents, by contrast, are intimidated by authority. They react passively and stay in the background.

Lareau writes of one low-income parent: At a parent-teacher conference, for example, Ms. McAllister (who is a high school graduate) seems subdued. The gregarious and outgoing nature she displays at home is hidden in this setting. She sits hunched over in the chair and she keeps her jacket zipped up. She is very quiet. When the teacher reports that Harold has not been turning in his homework, Ms. McAllister clearly is flabbergasted, but all she says is, "He did it at home." She does not follow up with the teacher or attempt to intervene on Harold's behalf. In her view, it is up to the teachers to manage her son's education. That is their job, not hers. Lareau calls the middle-class parenting style "concerted cultivation." It's an attempt to actively "foster and assess a child's talents, opinions and skills." Poor parents tend to follow, by contrast, a strategy of "accomplishment of natural growth." They see as their responsibility to care for their children but to let them grow and develop on their own.

Lareau stresses that one style isn't morally better than the other. The poorer children were, to her mind, often better behaved, less whiny, more creative in making use of their own time, and had a well-developed sense of independence. But in practical terms, concerted cultivation has enormous advantages. The heavily scheduled middle class child is exposed to a constantly shifting set of experiences. She learns teamwork and how to cope in highly structured settings. She is taught how to interact comfortably with adults, and to speak up when she needs to. In Lareau's words, the middle-class children learn a sense of "entitlement." That word, of course, has negative connotations these days. But Lareau means it in the best sense of the term: "They acted as though they had a right to pursue their own individual preferences and to actively manage interactions in institutional settings. They appeared comfortable in those settings; they were open to sharing information and asking for attention. It was common practice among middle-class children to shift interactions to suit their preferences." They knew the rules. "Even in fourth grade, middle-class children appeared to be acting on their own behalf to gain advantages. They made special requests of teachers and doctors to adjust procedures to accommodate their desires."

By contrast, the working-class and poor children were characterized by "an emerging sense of distance, distrust, and constraint." They didn't know how to get their way, or how to "customize"—using Lareau's wonderful term—whatever environment they were in, for their best purposes.

In one telling scene, Lareau describes a visit to the doctor by Alex Williams, a nine-year-old boy, and his mother, Christina. The Williamses are wealthy professionals. "Alex, you should be thinking of questions you might want to ask the doctor," Christina says in the car on the way to the doctor's office. "You can ask him anything you want. Don't be shy. You can ask anything." Alex thinks for a minute, then says, "I have some bumps under my arms from my deodorant."
Christina: "Really? You mean from your new deodorant?"
Alex:"Yes."
Christina: "Well, you should ask the doctor."

Alex's mother, Lareau writes, "is teaching that he has the right to speak up"—that even though he's going to be in a room with an older person and authority figure, it's perfectly all right for him to assert himself. They meet the doctor, a genial man in his early forties. He tells Alex that he is in the ninety-fifth percentile in height. Alex then interrupts:

ALEX: I'm in the what?
DOCTOR: It means that you're taller than more than
ninety-five out of a hundred young men when they're,
uh, ten years old.
ALEX: I'm not ten.
DOCTOR: Well, they graphed you at ten. You're—nine
years and ten months. They—they usually take the
closest year to that graph.

Look at how easily Alex interrupts the doctor—"I'm
not ten." That's entitlement: his mother permits that casual
incivility because she wants him to learn to assert himself
with people in positions of authority.

THE DOCTOR TURNS TO ALEX: Well, now the most
important question. Do you have any questions you
want to ask me before I do your physical?
ALEX: Um...only one. I've been getting some bumps
on my arms, right around here (indicates underarm).
DOCTOR: Underneath?
ALEX: Yeah.
DOCTOR: Okay. I'll have to take a look at those when I
come in closer to do the checkup. And I'll see what
they are and what I can do. Do they hurt or itch?
ALEX: No, they're just there.
DOCTOR: Okay, I'll take a look at those bumps for you.

This kind of interaction simply doesn't happen with lower-class children, Lareau says. They would be quiet and submissive, with eyes turned away. Alex takes charge of the moment. "In remembering to raise the question he prepared in advance, he gains the doctor's full attention and focuses it on an issue of his choosing," Lareau writes. In so doing, he successfully shifts the balance of power away from the adults and toward himself. The transition goes smoothly. Alex is used to being treated with respect. He is seen as special and as a person worthy of adult attention and interest. These are key characteristics of the strategy of concerted cultivation. Alex is not showing off during his checkup. He is behaving much as he does with his parents—he reasons, negotiates, and jokes with equal ease.

It is important to understand where the particular mastery of that moment comes from. It's not genetic. Alex Williams didn't inherit the skills to interact with authority figures from his parents and grandparents the way he inherited the color of his eyes. Nor is it racial: it's not a practice spécific to either black or white people. As it turns out, Alex Williams is black and Katie Brindle is white. It's a cultural advantage. Alex has those skills because over the course of his young life, his mother and father—in the manner of educated families—have painstakingly taught them to him, nudging and prodding and encouraging and showing him the rules of the game, right down to that little rehearsal in the car on the way to the doctor's office.

When we talk about the advantages of class, Lareau argues, this is in large part what we mean. Alex Williams is better off than Katie Brindle because he's wealthier and because he goes to a better school, but also because—and perhaps this is even more critical—the sense of entitlement that he has been taught is an attitude perfectly suited to succeeding in the modern world.

The best way to give advice: Offer Information.

“For one thing, when someone makes a recommendation for or against a particular option, a decision maker may feel like they have lost a bit of their independence in making a choice. Recommendations about how to go about making the choice may also make a decision maker feel a loss of independence. When the advice comes in the form of information, though, the decision maker still feels like they have some autonomy.”

Article

Watching television can shorten your life

"The human body was designed to move, not sit for extended periods of time," said Professor Dunstan. "But technological, social and economic changes mean that people don't move their muscles as much as they used to.

"For many people, on a daily basis they simply shift from one chair to another - from the car to the chair in the office to the chair on front of the television."

Dr Dunstan and his colleagues tracked 8,800 men and women aged 25 and over, over a period of six and a half years. The group, which did not include people already at risk of premature death from pre-existing cardiovascular disease, were tested for glucose tolerance and provided blood samples so researchers could measure biomarkers such as cholesterol and blood sugar levels. They were divided into three groups; those who watched fewer than two hours of television a day, those who watched two to four hours, and those who watched four or more hours a day.

During the follow up there were 284 deaths, 125 of which were from cancer and 87 from heart disease.

The researches found that, compared with people who watched less than two hours of television daily, those who watched more than four hours a day had a 46 percent higher risk of death from all causes and an 80 percent increased risk for CVD-related death.

"It could be a consequence of reduced energy expenditure over long periods," said Dr Dunstan. "The calories burnt while sitting is about the same as those burnt during sleep.

"Irrespective of how much exercise you do, if you are sitting still for four hours you have a greater risk of death.

"In addition to doing regular exercise, people should avoid sitting for prolonged periods move more, more often. Too much sitting is bad for your health."


Article

The Futile Pursuit of Happiness

''We don't realize how quickly we will adapt to a pleasurable event and make it the backdrop of our lives. When any event occurs to us, we make it ordinary. And through becoming ordinary, we lose our pleasure.''

It is easy to overlook something new and crucial in what Wilson is saying. Not that we invariably lose interest in bright and shiny things over time -- this is a long-known trait -- but that we're generally unable to recognize that we adapt to new circumstances and therefore fail to incorporate this fact into our decisions. So, yes, we will adapt to the BMW and the plasma TV, since we adapt to virtually everything. But Wilson and Gilbert and others have shown that we seem unable to predict that we will adapt. Thus, when we find the pleasure derived from a thing diminishing, we move on to the next thing or event and almost certainly make another error of prediction, and then another, ad infinitum.

NY Times Article

Outliers

"The striking thing about Ericsson's study is that he
and his colleagues couldn't find any "naturals," musicians
who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction
of the time their peers did. Nor could they find any
"grinds," people who worked harder than everyone else, yet
just didn't have what it takes to break the top ranks. Their
research suggests that once a musician has enough ability
to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes
one performer from another is how hard he or she works.
That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't
work just harder or even much harder than everyone else.
They work much, much harder."

"The emerging picture from such studies is that ten
thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level
of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in
anything," writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin. "In
study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction
writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master
criminals, and what have you, this number comes up
again and again. Of course, this doesn't address why some
people get more out of their practice sessions than others
do. But no one has yet found a case in which true worldclass
expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that
it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to
know to achieve true mastery."

"[...]achievement is less about talent than it is about opportunity."

From Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers.

How to be a writer.

In a New Yorker (January 28, 2002) article titled “The Learning Curve — How Do You Become a Good Surgeon? Practice,” Atul Gawande related the importance of practice. In writing about elite performers, he said, “[T]he most important talent may be the talent for practice itself.” He referred to K. Anders Ericsson, a psychologist, who noted that “the most important role that innate factors play may be in a person’s willingness to engage in sustained training.”

More here .

Henry Rollins on pumping Iron

I believe that the definition of definition is reinvention. To not be
like you parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself.
Completely.

When I was young I had no sense of myself. All I was, was a product of
all the fear and humiliation I suffered. Fear of my parents. The
humiliation of teachers calling me "garbage can" and telling me I'd be
mowing lawns for a living. And the very real terror of my fellow
students. I was threatened and beaten up for the color of my skin and
my size. I was skinny and clumsy, and when others would tease me I
didn't run home crying, wondering why. I knew all too well. I was
there to be antagonized. In sports I was laughed at. A spaz. I was
pretty good at boxing but only because the rage that filled my every
waking moment made me wild and unpredictable. I fought with some
strange fury. The other boys thought I was crazy.

I hated myself all the time. As stupid at it seems now, I wanted to
talk like them, dress like them, carry myself with the ease of knowing
that I wasn't going to get pounded in the hallway between classes.

Years passed and I learned to keep it all inside. I only talked to a
few boys in my grade. Other losers. Some of them are to this day the
greatest people I have ever known. Hang out with a guy who has had his
head flushed down a toilet a few times, treat him with respect, and
you'll find a faithful friend forever. But even with friends, school
sucked. Teachers gave me hard time. I didn't think much of them
either.

Then came Mr. Pepperman, my adviser. He was a powerfully built Vietnam
veteran, and he was scary. No one ever talked out of turn in his class.
Once one kid did and Mr. P. lifted him off the ground and pinned him to
the blackboard.

Mr. P. could see that I was in bad shape, and one Friday in October he
asked me if I had ever worked out with weights. I told him no. He told
me that I was going to take some of the money that I had saved and buy a
hundred-pound set of weights at Sears. As I left his office, I started
to think of things I would say to him on Monday when he asked about the
weights that I was not going to buy. Still, it made me feel special.
My father never really got that close to caring. On Saturday I bought
the weights, but I couldn't even drag them to my mom's car. An
attendant laughed at me as he put them on a dolly.

Monday came and I was called into Mr. P.'s office after school. He said
that he was going to show me how to work out. He was going to put me on
a program and start hitting me in the solar plexus in the hallway when I
wasn't looking. When I could take the punch we would know that we were
getting somewhere. At no time was I to look at myself in the mirror or
tell anyone at school what I was doing.

In the gym he showed me ten basic exercises. I paid more attention than
I ever did in any of my classes. I didn't want to blow it. I went home
that night and started right in. Weeks passed, and every once in a
while Mr. P. would give me a shot and drop me in the hallway, sending my
books flying. The other students didn't know what to think. More weeks
passed, and I was steadily adding new weights to the bar. I could sense
the power inside my body growing. I could feel it.

Right before Christmas break I was walking to class, and from out of
nowhere Mr. Pepperman appeared and gave me a shot in the chest. I
laughed and kept going. He said I could look at myself now. I got home
and ran to the bathroom and pulled off my shirt. I saw a body, not just
the shell that housed my stomach and my heart. My biceps bulged. My
chest had definition. I felt strong. It was the first time I can
remember having a sense of myself. I had done something and no one
could ever take it away. You couldn't say shit to me.

It took me years to fully appreciate the value of the lessons I have
learned from the Iron. I used to think that it was my adversary, that I
was trying to lift that which does not want to be lifted. I was wrong.
When the Iron doesn't want to come off the mat, it's the kindest thing
it can do for you. If it flew up and went through the ceiling, it
wouldn't teach you anything. That's the way the Iron talks to you. It
tells you that the material you work with is that which you will come to
resemble. That which you work against will always work against you.

It wasn't until my late twenties that I learned that by working out I
had given myself a great gift. I learned that nothing good comes
without work and a ceratin amount of pain. When I finish a set that
leaves me shaking, I know more about myself. When something gets bad, I
know it can't be as bad as that workout.

I used to fight the pain, but recently this became clear to me: pain is
not my enemy; it is my call to greatness. But when dealing with the
Iron, one must be careful to interpret the pain correctly. Most
injuries involving the Iron come from ego. I once spent a few weeks
lifting weight that my body wasn't ready for and spent a few months not
picking up anything heavier than a fork. Try to lift what you're not
prepared to and the Iron will teach you a little lesson in restraint and
self-control.

I have never met a truly strong person who didn't have self-respect. I
think a lot of inwardly and outwardly directed contempt passes itself
off as self-respect: the idea of raising yourself by stepping on
someone's shoulders instead of doing it yourself. When I see guys
working out for cosmetic reasons, I see vanity exposing them in the
worst way, as cartoon characters, billboards for imbalance and
insecurity. Strength reveals itself through character. It is the
difference between bouncers who get off strong-arming people and Mr.
Pepperman.

Muscle mass does not always equal strength. Strength is kindness and
sensitivity. Strength is understanding that your power is both physical
and emotional. That it comes from the body and the mind. And the
heart.

Yukio Mishima said that he could not entertain the idea of romance if he
was not strong. Romance is such a strong and overwhelming passion, a
weakened body cannot sustain it for long. I have some of my most
romantic thoughts when I am with the Iron. Once I was in love with a
woman. I thought about her the most when the pain from a workout was
racing through my body. Everything in me wanted her. So much so that
sex was only a fraction of my total desire. It was the single most
intense love I have ever felt, but she lived far away and I didn't see
her very often. Working out was a healthy way of dealing with the
loneliness. To this day, when I work out I usually listen to ballads.

I prefer to work out alone. It enables me to concentrate on the lessons
that the Iron has for me. Learning about what you're made of is always
time well spent, and I have found no better teacher. The Iron had
taught me how to live.

Life is capable of driving you out of your mind. The way it all comes
down these days, it's some kind of miracle if you're not insane. People
have become separated from their bodies. They are no longer whole. I
see them move from their offices to their cars and on to their suburban
homes. They stress out constantly, they lose sleep, they eat badly.
And they behave badly. Their egos run wild; they become motivated by
that which will eventually give them a massive stroke. They need the
Iron mind.

Through the years, I have combined meditation, action, and the Iron into
a single strength. I believe that when the body is strong, the mind
thinks strong thoughts. Time spent away from the Iron makes my mind
degenerate. I wallow in a thick depression. My body shuts down my
mind. The Iron is the best antidepressant I have ever found. There is
no better way to fight weakness than with strength. Once the mind and
body have been awakened to their true potential, it's impossible to turn
back.

The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all
kinds of talk, get told that you're a god or a total bastard. The Iron
will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference
point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in
the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It
never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two
hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.

“Ο έρωτας είναι ελευθερία”

Ο έρωτας και η επιβίωση είναι συστατικά στοιχεία της ανθρώπινης φύσης. Και είναι πολύ δυνατά ώστε να εκφυλιστούν. Ακόμα και αν η κοινωνία τα διώκει ή τα υποτάσσει, αυτά θα βρουν τρόπο να εκδηλωθούν. Πιστεύω ακράδαντα πως ο άνθρωπος που είναι ερωτικά ελεύθερος είναι επίσης πολιτικά, κοινωνικά αλλά και στη δημιουργία του ελεύθερος. Γι’ αυτό βλέπουμε συχνά καλλιτέχνες να έχουν μια μποέμικη, μια ιδιαίτερη ερωτική ζωή, διαφορετική από εκείνη του φαντάρου, του εργάτη ή του εισπράκτορα. Η δύναμη λοιπόν του έρωτα σκιρτά μέσα μας και εκδηλώνεται με την πρώτη ευκαιρία. Η γυναίκα π.χ. που χαρακτηρίζουμε άπιστη, ουσιαστικά επαναστατεί ενάντια στη μιζέρια που πιθανόν βιώνει.

Περικλής Κοροβέσης

Weed according to Carl Sagan

“I can remember the night that I suddenly realized what it was like to be crazy, or nights when my feelings and perceptions were of a religious nature. I had a very accurate sense that these feelings and perceptions, written down casually, would not stand the usual critical scrutiny that is my stock in trade as a scientist. If I find in the morning a message from myself the night before informing me that there is a world around us which we barely sense, or that we can become one with the universe, or even that certain politicians are desperately frightened men, I may tend to disbelieve; but when I’m high I know about this disbelief. And so I have a tape in which I exhort myself to take such remarks seriously. I say ‘Listen closely, you son of a bitch of the morning! This stuff is real!’ I try to show that my mind is working clearly; I recall the name of a high school acquaintance I have not thought of in thirty years; I describe the color, typography, and format of a book in another room and these memories do pass critical scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, unavailable to us without such drugs.”

And how right he was, as usual. Whole essay here.

Deliberate Practice does it.

Why Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin
The Role of Deliberate Practice in the acquisition of Expert Performance

"People believe that because expert performance is qualita-
tively different from normal performancethe expert performer
must be endowed with characteristics qualitatively different from
those of normal adults. This view has discouraged scien-
tists from systematically examiningexpert performers and ac-
counting for their performance in terms of the laws and princi-
ples of general psychology. Weagree that expert performanceis
qualitatively different from normal performance and even that
expert performers have characteristics and abilities that are
qualitatively different from or at least outside the range of those
of normal adults. However, we deny that these differences are
immutable, that is, due to innate talent. Only a fewexceptions,
most notably height, are genetically prescribed. Instead, we
argue that the differences between expert performers and nor-
mal adults reflect a life-long period of deliberate effort to im-
prove performance in a specific domain.
Most of our scientific knowledge about improvement and
change comes from laboratory studies of training and practice
that lasted hours, days, and occasionally weeks and months. In
addition, there is a growing body of data on the heritabilities of
various abilities and characteristics estimated for twins and
parents and their offspring sampled from the general popula-
tion (Plomin et al., 1990). Although behavioral geneticists care-
fully point out that their heritability estimates are valid onlyfor
the limited range of practice and skill in the normal environ-
ment of the adults studied, it isoften incorrectlyassumed bylay
people that these estimates can be directly extended to extreme
manipulations of environmental conditions, such as extended
deliberate practice. Most important, the effects of short-term
training cannot be readily extended to the effects of orders of
magnitude more practice.
A promising direction for research on the effects of extended
activities is to identify activities relevant to some goal and to
assess the amount of time individualsallocate to these activi-
ties. Recent research hasshown that the amount oftimeindivid-
uals spend reading as assessed by diaries is related to memory
for prose even when education and vocabulary are partialed out
(Rice, Meyer, & Miller, 1988). The estimated amount of read-
ing is also related to reading ability and, most interestingly,
increases in reading ability (R. C. Anderson, Wilson, & Field-
ing, 1988). Research on physical fitness has a long tradition of
measuring daily physical activity and exercise, and we have
cited the study in which Fagard et al. (1991) assessed the influ-
ence of both genetic factors and regular activity on aerobic and
anaerobic abilities. It would be ideal to plot the interaction of
genetic and environmental factors in longitudinal studies
across the entire life span (Rutter, 1989). Within this context,
we view the study of elite performers as particularly interesting
because from early ages their lives appear to maximize the
influence of environmental activities (deliberate practice) im-
proving a specific type of performance. In a rare study
Schneider, Bos, and Rieder (1993) included environmental fac-
tors along with physical characteristics and motivational char-
acteristics of individuals in a longitudinal study of elite tennis
players. Consistent with our framework they found that tennis
performance at ages 11 and 17 was primarily determined by
parental support and in particular motivation and tennis-speci-
fic skills, wherethe level of these skills in turnare mainlyattrib-
utable to assessed levelsof motivation and concentration.
We view elite performance as the product of a decade or more
of maximal efforts to improve performance in a domain
through an optimal distribution of deliberate practice. This
view provides us with uniqueinsights into the potential for and
limits to modifying the human body and mind. Manyanatomi-
cal characteristics, traditionally believed to be fixed, can adapt
and change in response to intense practice sustained for years.
Substantial change and learning can occur even during child-
hood, whensomechanges, such as in certain perceptual-motor
abilities, might be even easier to attain than duringadulthood.
Untrained adults can overcome limitson speed and processing
capacity byacquiring newcognitive skills that circumvent these
limits by qualitatively different processes. Further research on
the capacities and characteristics of expert performance will
give us a much deeper understanding of the full rangeof possi-
ble adaptations and methods forcircumventing limits (Ericsson
& Smith, 199la).
It does not follow from the rejection of innate limits on ac-
quired performance that everyone can easily attain high levels
of skill. Contemporary elite performers have overcome a num-
ber of constraints. They have obtained early access to instruc-
tors, maintained high levels of deliberate practice throughout
development, received continued parental and environmental
support, and avoided disease and injury. When one considers in
addition the prerequisite motivation necessary to engage in de-
liberate practice every day for years and decades, when most
children and adolescents of similar ages engage in play and
leisure, the real constraints on the acquisition of expert perfor-
mance become apparent. The commitment to deliberate prac-
tice distinguishesthe expert performer from the vast majority
of children and adults who seem to have remarkable difficulty
meeting the much lower demands on practice in schools, adult
education, and in physicalexercise programs.
We believe that a more careful analysis of the lives of future
elite performers will tell us how motivation is promoted and
sustained. It is also entirely plausible that such a detailed analy-
sis will reveal environmental conditions as well as heritable
individual differences that predispose individuals to engage in
deliberate practice during extended periods and facilitate moti-
vating them. Our empirical studies have already shown that
experts carefully scheduledeliberate practice and limit itsdura-
tion to avoid exhaustionand burnout. By viewing expert per-
formers not simply as domain-specific experts but as experts in
maintaining high levels of practice and improving perfor-
mance, we are likely to uncovervaluableinformation about the
optimal conditions for learning and education."

The Paradox of Choice

There is no default anymore - is that good or bad? Professor Barry Schwartz elaborates :

James Nachtwey is a hero

[...]Now, in case you're wondering why I have a certain interest, or fascination lets call it, with torture and beheadings and all of those things I have mentioned, is because each of these items reminds me in life over and over again what beasts we human beings really are. When you get right down to it human beings are nothing more than ordinary jungle beasts. Savages. No different from the Cro Magnon people who lived twenty five thousand years ago. No different. Our DNA hasn't changed substantially in a hundred thousand years. We're still operating out of the lower brain. The reptilian brain.Fight of flight. Kill or be killed. We like to think we've evolved and advanced because we can build a computer, fly an airplane, travel underwater, we can write a sonnet, paint a painting, compose an opera. But you know something? We're barely out of the jungle on this planet. Barely out of the fucking jungle. What we are, is semi-civilized beasts, with baseball caps and automatic weapons.

- George Carlin

James Nachtwey has given his life to serve truth and justice by capturing the pain, horror and devastation caused by the madness of war, through his photographic lens while at the same time using his artistic skill and vision to make the images he produces striking and immediate.

The worst thing is to feel that as a photographer I am benefiting from someone else's tragedy. This idea haunts me. It's something I have to reckon with every day because I know that if I ever allowed genuine compassion to be overtaken by personal ambition, I will have sold my soul. The only way I can justify my role is to have respect for the other person's predicament. The extent to which I do that is the extent to which I become accepted by the other; and to that extent, I can accept myself. - James Nachtwey

The legacy of chemical warfare in the Vietnam war, photos by James Nachtwey
The Vietnam syndrome, essay by Christopher Hitchens

Napoleon Hill