I enjoyed this interview and photo essay with photographer/artist Robert Sturman, who’s documented the practice of yoga in Africa:
Q: Are there differences in the practice of yoga in Kenya and the United States?
A. In Kenya, people walk out of yoga class feeling great, just like they do in New York. The one difference I loved, however, was that the children who took the classes always broke out into a spontaneous song or dance right in the middle of class. Then they would go back to the yoga postures.
Q.Speaking about the children in the photos, several of your most striking photos were taken in orphanages. How do these children benefit from yoga?
A. Through the practice of yoga, the children are given the opportunity to express themselves, be creative and open up physically and mentally. It was most apparent to me that by the time their hourlong class is over, they feel loved.
You can learn more about the Africa Yoga Program here, a nonprofit organization that teaches and employs more than 70 local yoga teachers and conducts up to 300 free yoga classes for more than 5,000 people weekly.
David Sedaris pens a delightful post on being a host in England after acquiring a house with not one, but two guest rooms:
Three of my sisters visited us in Sussex last Christmas, so Gretchen and Amy took a guest room each. We gave Lisa the master bedroom and moved next door to the converted stable I use as my office. One of the things Hugh noted during their stay was that, with the exception of Amy and me, no one in my family ever says good night. Rather, they just leave the room—sometimes halfway through dinner—and reappear the following morning. My sisters were considered my guests, but because there was a group of them and they could easily entertain one another I was more or less free to go about my business. Not that I didn’t spend time with them. In various pairings, we went on walks and bike rides, but otherwise they sat in the living room talking, or gathered in the kitchen to study Hugh at the stove. I’d join them for a while, and then explain that I had some work to do. This meant going next door to the stable, where I’d switch on my computer and turn to Google, thinking, I wonder what Russell Crowe is up to?
My favorite parts of the piece were the anecdotes of walking into conversations and overhearing strange snippets:
I walked into the living room after returning from a bike ride one afternoon and heard her saying to her mother, Joan, who was also there, “Don’t you just love the feel of an iguana?”
That same night, after my bath, I overheard her asking, “Well, can’t you make it with camel butter?”
I thought of asking for details—“Make what with camel butter?”—but decided I preferred the mystery. That often happens with company. I’ll forever wonder what my guest Kristin meant when I walked into the yard one evening and heard her saying, “Mini goats might be nice.” Or, odder still, when Hugh’s father, Sam, came to see us in France with an old friend he knew from the State Department. The two had been discussing the time they’d spent in Cameroon in the late sixties, and I entered the kitchen to hear Mr. Hamrick say, “Now, was that guy a Pygmy, or just a false Pygmy?”
There were two disturbing (to me) sentences in the piece. Can you guess what they are?
The Siberian Times reports an incredible exclusive: for the first time ever, researchers have found liquid blood from a preserved woolly mammoth. Note how casually the author drops this line about cloning of the animal:
It comes amid a hotly contested debate on whether scientists should try to recreate the extinct species using DNA, though there now seems little doubt that this WILL happen, and the Russian team from Yakutsk that made the find is working in a partnership with South Korean scientists who are actively seeking to bring the mammoth back to life.
The find was made on the New Siberian Islands – or Novosibirsk Islands, off the coast of the Republic of Sakha. The scientists believed from studying her teeth that this mammoth died when she was between 50 and 60 years of age.
So why did the blood not freeze? According to scientists, they speculate that mammoth blood contains a kind of natural antifreeze. Fascinating.
In a sport that clings to its traditions — from managers wearing uniforms to the playing of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” during the seventh-inning stretch — one time-honored feature at the ballpark has taken an absurd turn, at least for the game’s purists: the ceremonial first pitch.
I had no idea it was this bad until I read about animals throwing out the first pitch:
For decades, the honor was extended only a few times a season to a rarefied group that included presidents, mayors and military veterans. These days, it is regarded as a marketing opportunity, a sweetener in sponsorship deals between baseball teams and groups that want a piece of the spotlight.
The rite, now carried out nightly, is handed to actors and reality television stars, sponsors’ representatives and contest winners, and people dressed as animals as well as actual animals.
A capuchin monkey carried the ball out for a San Diego Padres game in September. Twice in the last two seasons, the Los Angeles Dodgers have welcomed to the mound Hello Kitty, or, rather, a person dressed as Hello Kitty.
Sometimes, there are ceremonial second, third, fourth and fifth pitches. The day after making his major league debut this month, John Gast, a promising pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, crouched up and down to catch five pitches. The honorees that day were Edward Jones, a financial planning company; the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; the Washington University School of Medicine; a local radio station; and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
So next time you’re at the game, you may be witness to something like this prior to the game:
Some psychologists point to FOMO, or “fear of missing out” on social opportunities, says a study published earlier this year in Computers in Human Behavior. Young adults who are dissatisfied with their lives or relationships feel compelled to check mobile gadgets repeatedly to see what social opportunities they are missing—even when they don’t enjoy it, the study says.
But my favorite is this one, on the perils of “too much eye contact”:
Too much eye contact can cause problems, too. In a social context, it may be seen as a sign of romantic interest, or just plain creepy.
I am confused by this statement taken as fact: holding eye contact works best for 7 to 10 seconds in a one-on-one conversation. Is this 7 to 10 seconds at a time? How long can one glance away before making eye contact again? I believe context is key, and the article just seems goofy. Also, there’s this “graphic” that looks like a page out of a graphic novel:
Don’t worry, sir! These red laser beams are non-lethal and won’t affect your vision.
An interesting post by Felix Salmon on “promiscuous media.” He thinks that because of the proliferation of blogs and various social media services, everyone is a curator (I don’t disagree):
Everybody is a curator, these days: publishers design platforms for certain types of content, editors shape publications by deciding what to leave out; journalists try to make sure that the stuff they’re doing is expressed to its best possible effect on the best possible platform. The result is a more fluid media ecosystem than we’ve been used to, but also a more effective one. Let content live where it works best; that way, the publishers of that content will be able to present something with maximal coherence and a minimum of feeling that they’re trying to do something they’re not particularly good at. The publishers who win are going to be the ones with addictive, compelling, distinctive content. Rather than the ones who are constantly flailing around, trying to copy everything that’s good somewhere else.
I don’t think blogging is dead. It’s just evolved.
What are your go-to sites for blogging? I’ve been on the fence about Tumblr: I like its ease of publishing, but what do I blog about?
For the first time since it began in 1927, the contest is requiring young spellers in preliminary and semifinal rounds to take a vocabulary test. Organizers say it is part of the Bee’s commitment to deepening contestants’ command of English.
Since 2002, a written or computer spelling test has been a component that, along with onstage spelling, factored in determining which spellers advanced to the semi-finals.
This year, competitors will advance to the semi-finals and finals based on their onstage spelling, as well as computer-based spelling and vocabulary questions. Vocabulary evaluation will count for half of a speller’s overall score.
Why? Because while being able to spell well is an excellent skill, it is, ultimately, a short-sighted one. Deep knowledge begins with knowing what the word means.
As a final sign-off for his mission aboard the International Space Station, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield performed David Bowie’s rendition of “Space Oddity.” The video has generated more than 15 million views on YouTube so far, and if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth it:
The Economistpublished a great explainer on how copyright works in space, applied to this rendition of “Space Oddity”:
The song “Space Oddity” is under copyright protection in most countries, and the rights to it belong to Mr Bowie. But compulsory-licensing rights in many nations mean that any composition that has been released to the public (free or commercially) as an audio recording may be recorded again and sold by others for a statutorily defined fee, although it must be substantively the same music and lyrics as the original. But with the ISS circling the globe, which jurisdiction was Commander Hadfield in when he recorded the song and video? Moreover, compulsory-licensing rights for covers of existing songs do not include permission for broadcast or video distribution. Commander Hadfield’s song was loaded onto YouTube, which delivers video on demand to users in many countries around the world. The first time the video was streamed in each country constituted publication in that country, and with it the potential for copyright infringement under local laws. Commander Hadfield could have made matters even more complicated by broadcasting live as he sang to an assembled audience of fellow astronauts for an onboard public performance while floating from segment to segment of the ISS.
That is because the space station consists of multiple modules and other pieces (called “elements”) under the registration of the United States, the European Space Agency (ESA) consortium, Russia and Japan. The agreement governing the ISS makes it clear (in Article 5) that the applicable laws, including those governing IP rights, depend on which part of it an astronaut is in. This is most relevant when astronauts conduct science or write accounts of their work, whether for public or private parties, although equally true during their off hours. The audio and video seem to have been recorded in the Destiny module, owned by America’s space agency, NASA, the Cupola, which previously owned by the ESA (and would thus have been governed by European law) but was transferred to NASA in 2005, and the Japanese Experiment Module, developed by Japan’s aerospace agency, JAXA. The video was transmitted to Canada (probably through ground stations around the globe), where Mr Bowie’s former bandmate Emm Gryner added a piano accompaniment and others edited and produced the final product. But recording a private performance does not violate any laws; a violation only occurs if the material is publicly distributed. Had the song been broadcast from space, Mr Bowie’s lawyers would have been entitled to seek redress in Canadian, American and Japanese courts, in addition to any objections they might have raised based on YouTube views elsewhere.
Turns out the making of this video took months of preparation, as Commander Hadfield had obtained permission to record and distribute the song; production and distribution of the song was entirely terrestrial.
In 1998, this magazine ran a story recounting the early attempts by scientists to understand fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva. Since then, their progress has shot forward. The advances have come thanks in part to new ways of studying cells and DNA, and in part to Jeannie Peeper.
Starting in the 1980s, Peeper built a network of people with FOP. She is now connected to more than 500 people with her condition—a sizable fraction of all the people on Earth who suffer from it. Together, members of this community did what the medical establishment could not: they bankrolled a laboratory dedicated solely to FOP and have kept its doors open for more than two decades. They have donated their blood, their DNA, and even their teeth for study.
…
Four times a year, Peeper sent out a newsletter she called “FOP Connection.” She included questions people sent her—What to do about surgery? How do you eat when your jaw locks?—and printed answers from other readers. But her ambitions were much grander: she wanted to raise money for research that might lead to a cure. With a grand total of 12 founding members, she created the International Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva Association (IFOPA).
Peeper didn’t realize just how quixotic this goal was. FOP had never been Zasloff’s main area of research. As the director of the Human Genetics branch of the NIH, he had discovered an entirely new class of antibiotics, and in the late 1980s, he left the NIH to develop them at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. His departure meant that no one—not a single scientist on Earth—was looking for the cause of FOP.
As a trivia side note, I had no idea there was a definition for a “rare disease”:
A rare disease is defined as any condition affecting fewer than 200,000 patients in the United States. More than 7,000 such diseases exist, afflicting a total of 25 million to 30 million Americans.
A fascinating discovery was recently published in the magazine Science on perhaps the world’s most adaptable insect: the cockroach. From the abstract:
In response to the anthropogenic assault of toxic baits, populations of the German cockroach have rapidly evolved an adaptive behavioral aversion to glucose (a phagostimulant component of baits). We hypothesized that changes in the peripheral gustatory system are responsible for glucose aversion. In both wild-type and glucose-averse (GA) cockroaches, D-fructose and D-glucose stimulated sugar–gustatory receptor neurons (GRNs), whereas the deterrent caffeine stimulated bitter-GRNs. In contrast, in GA cockroaches, D-glucose also stimulated bitter-GRNs and suppressed the responses of sugar-GRNs. Thus, D-glucose is processed as both a phagostimulant and deterrent in GA cockroaches, and this newly acquired peripheral taste sensitivity underlies glucose aversion in multiple GA populations. The rapid emergence of this highly adaptive behavior underscores the plasticity of the sensory system to adapt to rapid environmental change.
As The New York Timesnotes, what this means is that the cockroach has somehow evolved a way to make glucose smell/taste bitter to it, and it can thus avoid modern-day traps that use glucose as a primary ingredient. Instead of taste buds, roaches have taste hairs on many parts of their bodies. The three North Carolina researchers concentrated on those around the mouth area and on two types of nerve cells that sense tastes and respond by firing electrical signals to the brain. One responds only to sugars and other sweet substances; the other responds only to bitter substances. Whenever a molecule of something sweet attaches to a sweet detector, it fires electrical impulses and the roach brain senses sweetness, which makes it want to eat whatever it is tasting. Whenever a molecule of something bitter attaches to the bitter detector, that cell fires and the brain senses bitterness, which makes the roach want to avoid that substance.
Evolutionary advantages like this have helped the cockroach endure for millions of years. Fascinating.
Books I Read 