clang, clang, clang went the trolley oder schülerlotse

The cities of Augsburg and Köln, with others soon to follow suit, has installed pedestrian traffic signals in the pavement (Bodenampeln) of intersections and where lanes cross street-car tracks in order to prevent inattentive individuals, fixated on their mobile devices, from stumbling into on-coming traffic. Other places have designated lanes for those who’d prefer their telepresence to negotiating their actual surroundings. What do you think? Maybe some clever person ought to invent a crossing-guard (Schülerlotse) app that warns one if he or she is about to amble blinding into the street.

pranayama, amygdala

Whilst researching another matter, I came across twelve brilliant tips to stave off anxiety and relax the clenched muscles that express stressed responses (the unhealthy sort) with immediate results that one could mostly do in the scant privacy of one’s official cubical without seeming too weird, plus a whole wealth of other related avenues of relaxation and mediation at this website by Carol Bourne.
Of course we all have an intuition for these things and no one willingly creates knots in one’s muscles where negative energy can dwell—even the internal organs can tense up—but unless one is dogmatic about it, we all forget and need reminding, especially if relying on the interactions of likeminded individuals for advise and guidance and not deigning to the serendipity of surprise. My favourite tactic, with indeed instant results, was Alternate Nostril Breathing—whose exercise is really not that different from what Marsellus Wallace’s wife demonstrates for us: first seal the right nostril with the right thumb and inhale, pause (unless pregnant or having a heart-condition), cover the left nostril with the ring-finger and pinky of the same hand and release the right nostril. Exhale (drawing it out longer than the inhale) and then inhale through the right nostril. Repeat a few times but don’t overdo it in the beginning, consult your general practitioner and/or your local guru. This breathing practise has many benefits aside from the initial and rather surprising sense of well-being and also synchronises both hemispheres of the brain, calming the nerves, improving focus and cleansing the lungs—which are responsible for eliminating the overwhelming bulk of the waste-products our bodies produce, expelling a lot more than carbon-dioxide in exchange for oxygen but the residue as well of countless other chemical reactions happening inside us. Be sure to visit the website and forum above for more mindfulness.

presomnia

Mind Hacks’ creator Vaughan Bell contributes a fascinating investigation to The Atlantic that explores that liminal state between slumber and wakefulness called hypnagogia. Though the experience may be universally familiar, the mental landscape of lucid dreams, poetic idylls and unhinged realities, it is not a well-mapped one. If the state only manifested itself during those brief periods when we drift off to sleep, it might be understandably difficult to gain a purchase and examine the cognitive mechanisms at work, but researchers believe that trance and meditation could also be hypnagogic in nature, greatly prolonging the window for observance and study. Perhaps learning how the conscious mind dismantles itself can show us more about cognitive models and filters of perception in our waking hours.

voice and accountability indices

Broadcast on BBC Radio 4, professor and gadfly Timothy Garton Ash recently presented a series of sobering and important essays on the state of free speech, which distills the ideas and necessary dialogue found his comprehensive and engaging internet presence.
Positing that no subject should be taboo in the pursuit of knowledge, we see liberty of expression under assault not only—and paradoxically—by the synapses that an intimately connected world but also in those corridors of learning and ivory towers of educational institutions—also being the last place one would expect to find the aura of censorship and sophistry, Professor Garton Ash elucidates interlocutors with a treacherous trio of veto-powers that elegantly present the threat: the heckler’s veto—wherein in all dissent is lost in the noise and chaos, the assassin’s veto—the threat of violence or litigation, and the veto of the offended—the intimidating prospect of violating the safe-space of another group. What do you make of these mute-buttons and has the internet facilitated the creation of this sort of timorous bully-pulpit?

legal tender

The outstanding BLDGBlog is showcasing the cultured project of Bristol artist Heidi Hinder, entitled Financial Growth, that illustrates the way we exchange microbes is as much the common-currency as coin through petri-dish experiments.
As part of wider research into the meaning of cash in a digital age, where most transactions occur in the æther. Far from militantly advocating the end of coins and paper-notes and full integration into a cashless society or overly focused on hygiene, Money no Object examines what it means for something whose presence (and tangible reminders) has accompanied us all along to suddenly become immaterial, not just invisible like these bacterial landscapes that we keep in our pockets and purses, unseen until given the chance to be unfurled, and ritually exchanged to cultivate a more diverse garden. I wonder if the circulation of resistances and vulnerabilities is as important a social function as other forms of communication and what it might mean were that venue of expression to abruptly stop.

feu de joie and many happy returns

Happy birthday, your Majesty!  Of course, being queen has its privileges and in addition to her natural birthday, in June we will also be treated to the trooping of the colours and fanfare of the monarch’s official birthday, transported by long-standing tradition to a fair weekend in that month owing to the vagaries of English weather.

petsmart

Via the always interesting Super Punch, we find this clever, satirical internet start-up generator that delivers convincingly well-presented shells, frontages of so called tech unicorns—rare and majestic creatures that have attained a valuation of a billion dollars, on paper at least, but as the field gets crowded by copy-cats or vertical monopolies become less viable and hence a dead monoceros (this is an ex-unicorn). With testimonials and angel investors, one would be pardoned for mistaken these snowclone templates for actual start-ups with a similar naming-convention, which have surprisingly, as a cause for concern, achieved that prized status.

sequestered or the long now

Via the Presurfer, we learn about the resting place outside of the city of Chicago where the first nuclear reactor and associated waste was interred. Researchers at the University of Chicago, working under a top secret commission to bring the powerhouse on-line before the Axis Powers, under the supervision of Enrico Fermi, achieved this first sustainable, controlled reaction at the woodland laboratory in 1942.
The experimental Chicago Piles (CP-1 through CP-3) ran for about a decade until brought off-line and buried in situ—marked with granite blocks and the warning to potential grave-robbers that digging is not advised—though safe for visitors due to the low yield and shielding used for this prototype. Reading this postcard reminded me of the call for submissions several years back on how to handle the nuclear waste of contemporary times, which is much longer-lived and far more deadly and poses a significant problem that the next ten thousand generations of Earthlings will need to contend with. From a vantage point far older than human civilisation itself, how could we ensure that the message of danger and to keep away from today’s nuclear waste disposal sites are imparted to the future? Proposals included a defensive, infernal landscape with sand berms and giant totems of tortured souls, giant steely thorns like the sort that enveloped Sleeping Beauty’s castle, or even a priesthood of sorts to bridge the millennia and warn off the curious and scavengers that indeed you will be struck down by beams of invisible energy if you defile this ancient temple. Can you think of a way to signal danger that won’t be liable to misinterpretation, or is our bequest an unmarked grave?