Medley

The Red Heifer (Hebrew, parah adumah), was the cow whose ashes were used in the purification rites for one who had been contaminated through having come into contact with a corpse.

The procedure

As described in the book of Numbers (19:1-22), the cow had to be slaughtered outside the Israelite camp and its blood sprinkled in the direction of the holy of holies in the Tabernacle (in Temple times, the holy of holies in the Temple).

The cow was then burned whole together with cedar wood, a crimson thread, and hyssop. The ashes were mixed in a vessel containing spring water.

Leo Babauta – USA

A simplicity manifesto in the Age of Distraction: Part nine

The value of distraction

Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing,
of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t
hear, and not bothering.”

 A.A. Milne

Reading this book, you might get the idea that distractions are evil and that we must strive to be focused at all times. Not at all. Distraction is natural, it’s fun, and interestingly, it’s valuable.
Distraction, in most cases, is the enemy of focus, and so if we want to get anything done, we must learn to find at least a modicum of focuses, some of the time. But that’s not to say we should banish distraction, every minute of the day. What’s needed is balance.

[This story is based on materials provided by Association for Psychological Science; follow this link: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/.]

What doesn't kill us may make us stronger as a group, according to findings from new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Going through painful experiences together can change a group’s behavior, promoting bonding and solidarity.

The research suggests that, despite its unpleasantness, pain may actually have positive social consequences, acting as a sort of “social glue” that fosters cohesion and solidarity within groups:

“Our findings show that pain is a particularly powerful ingredient in producing bonding and cooperation between those who share painful experiences,” says psychological scientist and lead researcher Brock Bastian of the University of New South Wales in Australia. “The findings shed light on why camaraderie may develop between soldiers or others who share difficult and painful experiences.”

Bastian and colleagues Jolanda Jetten and Laura J. Ferris of the University of Queensland examined the link between pain and social bonding in a series of experiments with undergraduate students.

Often, research findings reflect the scientist's and the public's expectations. Sometimes, they come close. Other times, research results simply astound everyone.

Case in point is the recent research of Professor Peter R. Giancola of the psychology department of the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences. He, and his former graduate student, Aaron Duke, have found an unexpected relation between spiritual beliefs, violence and alcohol consumption.

“Oversimplifying – in many cases the more religious someone is, the more aggressive they will become after drinking alcohol,” Giancola said.

John Algeo – USA

Names are inherently fantastic, both literally as “marked by extreme individuality” and metaphorically as “conceived by unrestrained fancy” or “ingenuous, clever in contrivance and use.”

One of the remarkable facts about name study is the extent to which it serves as a link between otherwise diverse disciplines and activities. Geography, history, genealogy, sociology, folklore, linguistics, etymology, literary criticism, anthropology, lexicography, encyclopedia texts, dialectology, manufacturing terminology, trade-naming, marketing, criminology, legal studies, scientific terminology, psychology, astronomy, philosophy, and pop culture are some of the motley crew that join hands in the study of names (that is, onomastics).

Harry Potter

Leo Babauta – USA

A simplicity manifesto in the Age of Distraction: Part eight

“It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The
question is, what are we busy about?”

Henry David Thoreau

How not to live in your inbox

Many of us do this — we have our email inbox open most of the day, and most of the time, our work is right there, in the inbox. It’s where we live, communicate, keep track of tasks, do our work, organize ourselves.

Unfortunately, it’s not the best way to live and work. You’re constantly getting interrupted by new messages, and so we’re at the mercy of the requests of others. A new email comes in, and so we must stop what we’re doing to check the new email, and possibly respond. Even if we don’t respond right away, whatever we were just doing was interrupted.

Mindfulness meditation produces personal experiences that are not readily interpretable by scientists who want to study its psychiatric benefits in the brain. At a conference near Boston April 5, 2014, Brown University researchers will describe how they've been able to integrate mindfulness experience with hard neuroscience data to advance more rigorous study.