Weekend Thoughts - 11.28.15

Image by Benjamin Balázs, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. Last October, a Chicago police officer named Jason Van Dyke shot 17 year-old Laquan McDonald (who was walking the streets holding a knife and allegedly under the influence of PCP, although he did not violently engage the cop) 16 times and murdered him. The police department then proceeded to lie about it and deleted surveillance footage from a nearby business, and the murderer was kept on payroll for 400 days after the incident. The footage of the murder was released this week, and can be viewed at the aforelinked website. Naturally, Chicago has not taken too kindly to this show of unnecessary force (on a minor, no less) by one of its police officers. Yet another example of why we need to be documenting and following up on the large number of civilians murdered by police more thoroughly.

2. I consider this to be both staggering and telling: more than 1 out of 4 Americans believes the United States government to be the enemy, according to a recent poll. My personal belief is that we are all in this together, and we need to work "across the aisle", so to speak, with our perceived "enemies", rather than engaging in a war against them. We must all wake up together, or we won't be able to awaken at all.

3. George Orwell, author of many timeless classics such as 1984 and Animal Farm, held some strong opinions regarding improving one's ability to think and write. A post on High Existence explore's Orwell's ways that politicians use language to deceive us, which may forever affect the way you perceive politician's speeches. I greatly enjoyed the following list of Orwell's "Six Rules for Better Writing and Better Thinking":

1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active voice.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 11.21.15

Image by Benjamin Balzázs, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. As a fairly big science fiction fan, I was intrigued by this article detailing why you probably won't live to see the final Star Wars movie. You see, unlike comic book universes, Star Wars has the ability to expand even further in several directions—time, places, characters, etc. A comic book series is limited in ways that Star Wars is not. I am definitely looking forward to the movie coming out next month (already bought tickets!) and to the future offerings to come, hopefully for the rest of my life and beyond.

2. Apparently the 1000th U.S. citizen murdered by police this year occurred last Sunday, although it is a bit hard to get concrete data around this topic because there is no national database that accurately reports the number of people killed by police. However, organizations such as The Guardian, Killed By Police, and Fatal Encounters have been making a concerted effort to compile data and create a repository for information on this topic. There are discrepancies between the sites, because there isn't any official database being maintained by the government, something that FBI Director James Comey described as "embarrassing". Either way, roughly 1000 civilians-murdered-by-police in 2015 seems like an extremely high number to me, and something that needs dire attention from the government.

3. The act of yawning is often taken to mean that a person is bored or exhausted, but science shows that yawning may indicate that the brain needs to cool down. Other reasons for yawning include being in a mentally-taxing situation and increasing the flow oxygen to the body. Instead of taking offense and insisting that someone who is yawning is not interested in what you have to say, try understanding that it can be a physiological response. Now of course, that doesn't necessarily mean that what you are talking about is worth listening to, but it's worth considering nonetheless.

4. Atlas Obscura explores the fascinating history of flipping the bird, or displaying one's extended middle finger to another person. Turns out it got its start in Ancient Rome, and has been with us since then!

5. An excellent interview regarding with Terence McKenna, featured in the book Zig Zag Zen: Buddhism and Psychedelics, was republished on Reality Sandwich this week. As a fan of both topics, I found it an enjoyable read. The following quote blew my mind: "Compassion and awareness. To my mind the real contrast between Buddhism and psychedelic shamanism is between a theory out of which experiences can be teased and an experience out of which theory can be teased." WHOA!

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 11.14.15

Image by Benjamin Balzás, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy (belated) Saturday y'all! I had a lot going on both during last week and the weekend, so this article is out a few days late. My apologies! Without further ado—below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

From Hopes & Fears, An interesting collection of ideas about whether or not it is possible to experience a high—or something similar—from simply looking at a piece of art.

The Guardian reports on a study that showed that religious children are meaner than their secular counterparts. It turns out that religious beliefs can have a negative influence on a child's sense of altruism and judgment of others' actions, even when their parents see them as "more empathetic".

From Disinformation, an image of what happens to your body after you die.

A new video filmed at a pig slaughterhouse has been leaked and can be viewed at ATTN:. Warning: this is not for the faint of heart. The video depicts a Hormel slaughterhouse where workers knowingly violate federal violations and even mention during the footage that they could be shut down by the USDA. I think the important thing to realize here is that this is not an outlier of the factory farming industry—this is the norm.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 11.7.15

Image by Akban Martial Arts Academy, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. The United States Presidential Election season is upon us, and I have been inundating myself with political coverage to remain somewhat-aware of what is going on. I've always taken issue with the way most of the people I know view the political system—as a choice between two opposing parties. In reality, the "differences" that the Democrats and Republicans try to present are clearly designed to distract us from the truth that they are essentially two similar-yet-different flavors of the same giant turd. I have often chosen to vote third-party, to the chagrin of my friends and family who insist that voting for a third-party candidate is a "waste of a vote". I definitely don't agree with this sentiment, and was encouraged to see an article this week describing how the Internet has made it possible for third-party candidates (and political "outsiders" in general) to get noticed and gain traction in a political race. More so than ever before, it is possible for third-party candidates to have a real chance of entering the political scene and make an actual difference, and I applaud that wholeheartedly. Perhaps the Internet will even bring an end to the (vastly) two-party system that we currently live under.

2. This company started its reign in the publishing industry by putting mom and pop shops out of business via its massively successful online store, and now Amazon has opened its first physical bookstore in Seattle, Washington. The thing that is really intriguing to me (in addition to the fact that Kindles and Amazon tablets will be featured alongside the books and there will be a level of curation that traditional bookstores can't match because of Amazon's enormous ratings database) is that the books on the main shelves will be front-facing. Only the "overstock" books in the highest level of the shelves will have books featured spine-out. It strikes me as reminiscent of the user interface of an app store. We'll have to see how the stores fare, but I'd definitely be interested in checking one out if I ever get the chance.

3. I am by no means a philosophy buff, but I did enjoy this collection of 18 rare Friedrich Nietzsche quotes to make you question everything on High Existence.

4. One of my favorite beers from before my days as a vegetarian, the Irish beer Guinness is going to stop using a fish organ byproduct in the brewing process. For decades, the company has been using isinglass, a collagen harvested from fish swim bladders to filter impurities out of the brew. Apparently there was enough pressure from vegetarians and vegans that the company has decided to introduce a new filtering process sometime in 2016. This change shouldn't affect the flavor whatsoever, as isinglass is only used to filter the beer rather than flavor it. Personally, I can't wait to have another Guinness next year!

5. This article on the dark side of clean eating explores the concept of taking "healthy eating" too far. Excessive healthy eating and a strong desire to maintain a low body weight is classified as orthorexia nervosa and is considered by many to be an eating disorder. This can be a serious disorder and some victims have died from malnutrition. The article also discusses the Blonde Vegan, who turned her back on veganism after experiencing malnutrition and obtaining an worrisomely-low body weight. Sadly, she received a lot of criticism from the vegan community, including death threats from former fans who believed that she was betraying the lifestyle. The article goes on to discuss the effect that social media (where many people attempt to portray themselves in a positive-yet-distorted light) has on eating disorders. My two cents: I believe that it is possible for someone to become unhealthily obsessive/compulsive about eating habits, but that shouldn't stop someone who wants to become healthy from implementing positive changes in their diet, even if they contradict mainstream dietary opinions. I am saddened—but not surprised—to hear that the Blonde Vegan experienced a violent and negative reaction from her former vegan fans. Vegans have a tendency to come across as holier-than-thou and are not easy to let someone leave the community, but I believe that people should do what they feel is best for them with regard to their diet. And I also agree that social media presents a difficult (and sometimes unrealistic or even unhealthy) body frame for people (especially young girls) to try to imitate.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Weekend Thoughts - 10.31.15

Image by Jon Fife, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. Pretty much the only yoga-specific blog that I read on a regular basis, The Everything Yoga Blog, has a post titled Yoga Privilege that discusses the tendency that some typically-cheerful, focus-on-the-bright-side, spiritual folks have to actively avoid addressing the "dark" aspects of life. Combined with that, there is the possibility that someone will catch said people on a bad day and ask in a snarky tone, "I thought you were all about being grateful and everything being love?" The author (Diane DeGiorgio) defines this as yoga privilege—yogis are expected to be happy-go-lucky, zen, meditative, chill people who aren't supposed to feel sad, angry, annoyed, frustrated, impatient, afraid, or grumpy. Rather than buy into this outsider's opinion, DeGiorgio recommends that we give ourselves the permission to feel all of our feelings fully, even the "bad" or "negative" ones.

2. Earlier this week, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a statement showing that processed meat (like hot dogs and bacon) causes cancer. Eating 50 grams of processed meat (meat that has been salted, cured, fermented, smoked, or processed in another way) each day increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 18%. In addition, red meat (which includes beef, lamb, and pork) was deemed "probably carcinogenic to humans" and has associations with colon cancer, pancreatic cancer, and prostate cancer. In light of that news, I would like to encourage my friends and family to put down the plate of meat and pick up a plate of vegetables, fruits, beans, grains, nuts, and seeds!

3. During the same week that a South Carolina police officer was fired for violently throwing an unarmed (albeit unruly) high school teenager across the room, one cop in Washington DC spun a negative conflict into a positive dance-off that was fun for all. I highly recommend checking out the video. As one of the DC kids mentioned, "There are some good cops." Amen to that.

4. Turns out that people who have stressful jobs suffer from years being shaved off of their lives. In other words, according to science, your job is literally killing you.

5. Finally, to leave you with some otherworldly brain fodder, a think-piece that discusses the concept that if we encounter extraterrestrial life, it may be inorganic. This means that the aliens we're looking for may be more similar to our cell phones, televisions, computers, and aircraft than any organic life that exists on Earth. This idea does sit well with me, as it makes sense that the next "stage" in evolution could involve inorganic, rather than organic, life forms.

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.