Medley

Kathleen Hall – Canada

The Great Pyramid and Sphinx at Giza

In June 2015 I accepted a teaching position at an international school in Cairo. I had previously travelled a bit in Egypt and have always been fascinated with the Middle East so I was very excited about this new adventure in my life. Although tourism has significantly dropped since 2010, Egypt still attracts many foreigners and expats such as myself - who finally embraced the overwhelming pull its magnetic forces had on my life since childhood, and moved there! As a side note, for me it began with my armchair travels when I was a young girl, reading about and seeing old photos of Egypt and the Seven Wonders of the World, in the lovely old “Books of Knowledge” we had in our family library.

Leo Babauta – USA

A simplicity manifesto in the Age of Distraction: Part 14

Going with the flow

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.
Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let
reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in
whatever way they like.”

Lao-Tzu

No matter how much structure we create in our lives, no matter how many good habits we build, there will always be things that we cannot control — and if we let them, these things can be a huge source of anger, frustration and stress.

The simple solution: learn to go with the flow. For example, let’s say you’ve created the perfect peaceful morning routine. You’ve structured your mornings so that you do things that bring you calm and happiness. And then a water pipe bursts in your bathroom and you spend a stressful morning trying to clean up the mess and get the pipe fixed.

Waves in a Bose-Einstein condensate: a many-particle effect.

New methods for many-body quantum calculations

Quantum systems are extremely hard to analyze if they consist of more than just a few parts. It is not difficult to calculate a single hydrogen atom, but in order to describe an atom cloud of several thousand atoms, it is usually necessary to use rough approximations. The reason for this is that quantum particles are connected to each other and cannot be described separately. Kaspar Sakmann (TU Wien, Vienna) and Mark Kasevich (Stanford, USA) have now shown in an article published in Nature Physics that this problem can be overcome. They succeeded in calculating effects in ultra-cold atom clouds which can only be explained in terms of the quantum correlations between many atoms. Such atom clouds are known as Bose-Einstein condensates and are an active field of research.

Leo Babauta – USA

A simplicity manifesto in the Age of Distraction: Part 13

Slowing Down

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.”

Gandhi

The world most of us live in is hectic, fast-paced, fractured, hurried. What’s more, most of us are conditioned to think this is the way life should be.

Life should be lived at break-neck speed, we believe. We risk our lives in cars and we break the speed limit, rushing from one place to another. We do one thing after another, multi-tasking and switching between tasks as fast as we can blink.

All in the name of productivity, of having more, of appearing busy, to ourselves and to others.

But life doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, I’d argue that it’s counterproductive.

If our goal is to create, to produce amazing things, to go for quality over quantity, then rushing is not the most effective way to work. Slowing down and focusing is always more effective.

Rushing produces errors. It’s distracting to flit from one thing to the next, with our attention never on one thing long enough to give it any thought or create anything of worth. Hurrying produces too much noise to be able to find the quiet the mind needs for true creativity and profound thinking.

So yes, moving quickly will get more done. But it won’t get the right things done.

Individuals who blame karma for their poor health have more pain and worse physical and mental health, according to a new study from University of Missouri researchers. Targeted interventions to counteract negative spiritual beliefs could help some individuals decrease pain and improve their overall health, the researchers said.

“In general, the more religious or spiritual you are, the healthier you are, which makes sense,” said Brick Johnstone, a neuropsychologist and professor of health psychology in the MU School of Health Professions. “

“But for some individuals, even if they have even the smallest degree of negative spirituality – l basically, when individuals believe they're ill because they've done something wrong and God is punishing them – their health is worse.”

Coalsack Nebula

The Coalsack Nebula is located about 600 light-years away in the constellation of Crux. This huge, dusky object forms a conspicuous silhouette against the bright, starry band of the Milky Way and for this reason the nebula has been known to people in the southern hemisphere for as long as our species has existed.

The Spanish explorer Vicente Yáñez Pinzón first reported the existence of the Coalsack Nebula to Europe in 1499. The Coalsack later garnered the nickname of the Black Magellanic Cloud, a play on its dark appearance compared to the bright glow of the two Magellanic Clouds, which are in fact satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. These two bright galaxies are clearly visible in the southern sky and came to the attention of Europeans during Ferdinand Magellan's explorations in the 16th century. However, the Coalsack is not a galaxy. Like other dark nebulae, it is actually an interstellar cloud of dust so thick that it prevents most of the background starlight from reaching observers.

Richard Hiltner – USA

As Dr. Samuel Hahnemann explains, the term “cure” or health occurs when:

“…the spirit-like vital force [dynamis] animating the material human organism reigns in supreme sovereignty. It maintains the sensations and the activities of all the parts of the living organism in a harmony that obliges wonderment. The reasoning spirit who inhabits the organism can thus freely use this healthy living instrument to reach the lofty goal of human existence.”¹

Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann was a German physician, best known for creating a system of alternative medicine called homeopathy