Mondays

Prahlad Jani, an 82-year-old Indian yogi says he hasn't had any food for 70 years.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.ce6e076d355a498ef621bad2bbef1a32.f1&show_article=1

A good friend of mine from the Edinburgh era didn't use to eat anything on Mondays. I will try to introduce raw-juice-tea Mondays to my life this year. It's been two years and two weeks now that I've been a vegetarian with occasional fish, which is slowly leaving my diet. I'm very good with what is good for me when I have a good practice routine. I've realised it's about time I should do something particular and new to challenge my very comfortable habits. This article http://www.healthandyoga.com/html/news/food/spm_fos.asp pretty much summarises why. So this Monday I'll donate blood, maybe it'll be Wednesday instead for this week's bananas and herb tea, although there's no rush. It's nice to think there's plenty of time for all this.

Panpsychism

Andy Clark shifts the philosophical emphasis from analysis of the brain to analysis of a human’s kinesthetic interaction with an ecological and social space. He points out that large-scale social projects, such as a building project or a disaster relief effort, occur across a considerably extended space and through the intersection of many people’s minds, and are not limited to neuronal firings in any individual brain. Clark, in a joint paper with David Chalmers, discusses the fictional example of Otto, a man with memory problems who remembers the location of a library (and other useful pieces of information) by writing it down in a notebook. They argue that Otto’s memory is literally in the notebook, not in his brain. Similarly, much of the memory of all of us arguably now resides in a variety of electronic devices.

A more robust form of criticism of the reductionist program comes from a revival of panpsychism by philosophers such as Galen Strawson and Gregg Rosenberg, and physicists such as Henry Stapp. They concur with Alfred North Whitehead’s view that for consciousness to be anywhere in nature it must be everywhere in nature, and with William James’ view that our stream of consciousness is open to intrusions from an environmentally-pervasive conscious ‘more’. In other words, everything has an element of consciousness. For most of the materialists, consciousness exists only as a rare occurrence in the brains of a single or a few species (if at all). The panpsychists charge that on this account, consciousness is a complete ‘ontological dangler’: a few anomalous islands of consciousness surface, for little apparent reason, in a vast sea of insentient and unconscious dead matter. Strawson, Stapp and Rosenberg object that the materialist picture arises from a Newtonian misunderstanding of matter. However, in quantum physics, matter may not be insentient, unconscious and dead, but have an element of consciousness too.

by Laura Weed http://www.philosophynow.org/issue87/Philosophy_of_Mind_An_Overview

To the new! (yesterday)

A vagabond is a drifter and an itinerant wanderer who roams wherever they please, following the whim of the moment. Vagabonds may lack residence, a job, and even citizenship.
Decadence can refer to a personal trait, or to the state of a society (or segment of it). Used to describe a person's lifestyle. Concise Oxford Dictionary: "a luxurious self-indulgence". Oscar Wilde: "Classicism is the subordination of the parts to the whole; decadence is the subordination of the whole to the parts."
Source Wikipedia

I'm can't stop listening to 'One Night in Bangkok' while actually I should be sleeping indeed. The beat is following the earlier 'Down Under', and 'Africa'. If there was any chance of learning Russian in Africa, Toto would give me the firm push needed for deciding where to head now when my archeology career is coming to its end. I have been googling Trans-Siberian to Beijing too many times and any B-starting large Asian city has a catch on me now. Besides surfing in the web to find out all the visas to China and places are quite expensive and input consuming, I was reading about Nietzsche and his stuff and thinking people are like house plants, if they're a little uncomfortable and in a little pot, they come up which much more. I guess I'm comparing Nordic to the rest of it, on the other hand, their minimalistic design is great. Anyhow, I'm not trying to suppress my roots and sprouts from stretching out but the fact is that I'm not doing much. I did go to yoga today and had an amazing practice, I indulged myself later on and had some fancy salad and bread-- the prospect of affording all the visas was not happy. So I yoga my way through vagabondage and decadence; put the pieces together and hopefully do something.

I would like to believe the time of suffering diseases and writing great things is over and this unknown new will come up. Maybe it'll be minimalism and nothing, and all. It shouldn't be too hard. It's 2012! Better than ever, it is. It seems future has taken God's place.


There's a a good documentary about Grandfather Jing and his customers by Zhou Bing on this website http://www.alanmacfarlane.com/FILES/grandpa_jing.htm
I wanted to download it as a new year's post but the file was too big.

Christmas lifestyle special

“Drive it like you stole it”, The Glitch Mob.

“Fish, booze and chocolate”, Mari Valdur

"Aaria" Eino Tamberg


This Christmas was supposed to be unbearable as my sister, my dearest of all, was away for Christmas the first time and there was no proper snow to look at. Also, I couldn’t ask friends over because I was very lazy last week and wanted to go back to the city soon after holiday to actually get some work done. Hence I came up with a plan how to make these couple of most touching days of the year less dramatic and mentally challenging. Of course I could have gone for the healthy balanced solution but as I was becoming more and more sad I gave myself a right for an easy way out. There are some points that became rules over these days, which will probably help in case my sister being away is the new family tradition. I have adapted.

1. Drink all the alcohol offered. Show initiative to get more. Do not act drunk or you will not get more, this is not a flat party.
2. Try to gain 2 kg and do everything to achieve this during these limited days. This makes eating Christmas food so much more meaningful and guilt free. Eat all the chocolates around. If you’re a vegetarian become a passionate pescaterian for the time being.
3. If an idea of loneliness or holiday related depression kicks in, go back to the basics: this is a meaningless religious commercial holiday.
4. If you now come to claim that this is just a beautiful time that should not be ruined by this or that come to think of all the poor poor children who are waiting for a Santa to arrive but the man never does. So they go to bed feeling empty for Christmas being over, hoping that the year will past quick as hopefull Santa will come around next time. But let me tell you, Santa won’t. So you’ll feel so sad for these children that your own problems seem much smaller as you’re a grown-up and stronger. Now the feeling of being stronger should properly take over and you should feel just furious for all the injustice and hurt in the world. There is no space left for Christmas gloom.

Day 1.
On Friday I got up, watched series, did the dishes and took a train from Tallinn to Türi. This was in the afternoon and it was getting dark. On the side of the rails I saw two huge moose, they seemed so fagile carrying their huge bodies in confusion toward the white line of birch trees. My Mum came to pick my brother and me up, we got vitamins, honey and coffee for my great aunt to whose birthday we were heading shortly. It was a joint one with my Gran, my Gran turning 75 and auntie Vaike 80. They looked fabulous and gave me huge loving hugs. There were many relatives and once the band started playing, most of them took off to the dance floor to shake it from the bottom of their heart.














My Gran at her party. Photo Signe Jäetma









My Gran hugging Santa, Koidula and Jakobson watching. Photo Signe Jäetma


Around 3pm I entered the drink-n-eat shuffle
8 blueberry cupcakes
1 glass of champagne
Fruit
1 boiled potato
2 pieces of herring in sour cream sauce
3 slices of Gran’s bread
1 glass of champagne
2 pieces of fish in tomato sauce
Fruit
1 glass of champagne
2 shots of cranberry liquor
1 glass of champagne
1 shot of cranberry liquor
2 pieces of Gran’s bread
1 plate of fish in tomato sauce
1 glasses of champagne
7 chocolate truffles
1 piece of cake
3 chocolates
(missed red wine, homemade beer!! and various booze offered to me while I was having the cake and was too distracted and inarticulate)

Day 2.
8 pancakes with cream cheese and blackcurrant jam
1 cup of tea
6 chocolates
3 tursamaks salad sandwiches
½ blackcurrant liquor shot
4 chocolates
2 glasses of champagne
2 pieces of salmon with pumpkin and 2 potatoes
4 tursamaks salad sandwiches
2 chocolates
1 glass of champagne
1 chocolate
(now decided to eat all the leftovers within a reach, which was not easy to do at this time of day)
1 piece of salmon
2 pieces of bread
4 tursamaks sandwiches
2 blueberry muffins
1 cranberry liquor shot

Day 3.
I slept til noon and opened my eyes at times to check if the sun was still shining. It really was. I did my daily (no so much daily yet) practice but all the fish, cream and alcohol had made my body very inflexible. Maybe it was the fact that my yoga mat was not there or that there was no support of other people’s presence, it was just so much harder than in the beginning of the week. However, I finished and realised this was the first time I had carried out the whole of my simplified practice at a location other than the yoga school. I’ve always wanted things to come to me quickly, right now and to the full extent. I rarely live up to achieving this and this brings discontent. Whenever I fall, it doesn’t matter whether I am becoming better overall or not, all that matters is to pick it up, forgive and carry on. No more fish, pointless booze or sweets for me for a while.

Going green

If sustainability is about one thing, it’s survival. Probably the most famous story of all about survival appears in “One Thousand and One Nights”. Scheherazade volunteers to marry King Shahryar knowing it is his custom to take a virgin in marriage each night and kill her the next morning. She survives from one night to the next by telling stories that never quite finish. It’s her art that keeps her alive. But it does so in two ways. Night by night, story by story, she effects a change in the king’s cruel heart, awakening his imagination and sympathy. After a thousand and one nights, the king reveals his love for her. By surviving, Scheherazade shows that art not only reflects the world, it changes it too.

by Robert Butler http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/robert-butler/going-green

direction raw

http://ohsheglows.com/2011/07/11/raw-buckwheat-breakfast-porridge/