Thoughts
Yoga is more than just about bodies moving and breathing in a room. It's about life. This is a place to go a little deeper into just what that means. So I've collected some of my own thoughts, and those of some inspirational people. Read and enjoy.
Recommendations:
Check out this new book, available
online, by a witty fellow known only as "Dr. Adequate".
Points of Interest:
Herbal Medicine - SkepticWiki Article about herbal medicine. A quote from there:
"[T]he scale of the problem today is greater than ever. Two thirds of herbal remedies on sale are produced by harvesting wild plants. A recent report by Plantlife International, the wild plant conservation charity, claimed that 4,000 to 10,000 herbs worldwide are endangered by the herbal medicine industry. This is despoliation on a scale which makes the “ecological footprint” of a pharmaceutical company seem modest and innocuous. "
Isaac Asimov on The Relativity of Wrong: "when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
Essays on Our Place in the World:
Richard Dawkins, on Gaps in The Mind, gorillas, humans, and why we're not so different in the end. With that in mind, here's some evidence that you can see for yourself of our close relationship:
See two beautiful videos of gorillas, here and here.
A video of a chimpanzee walking upright as it crosses a river.
A chimpanzee using a tool to crack nuts
Still not impressed? Here's a whole group of them.
Here you can see a large male chimpanzee watching after his band as they cross a road.
Click here to read an article about this behavior.
And just because they're amazing: Mudskippers
Jared Diamond, Australia's Past and Australia's Future, concerning why things have happened so differently for people living on different continents, and why it doesn't have to do with the people themselves being different. This one's a little heavy.
Donald E. Brown compiled a list of cultural traits common to all human societies. I find inspiration and insight in the commonality of the human condition. Insight because if we can see those things that are common throughout humanity, we might better be able to see our own underlying biases. Human Universals.
On the Beauty of the Natural World:
Two videos of the Philippine Eagle, of which there are less than two hundred left in the world: click here, and here.
The Siberian Tiger is a powerful creature, sadly there may be as few as 330 living in the wild.
Astronomy Picture of the Day, a website that each day offers an amazing picture of the cosmos, with an expert's explanation of what we're looking at. Inspiring.
The Loom: A Blog About Life, Past and Future by Carl Zimmer, updated every few days you'll find frighteningly well written, impeccably researched entries about life on the planet earth, in all it's diverse and wondrous forms. Find out everything from why leaves turn those vivid colours every autumn, to what neuroscientists say about the nature of the "self". Of course, Zimmer is at his best when writing about parasites, some of the most amazing creatures on the planet - and he seldom disappoints - from microbes that control the sex lives of moths to wasps that literally take control of the minds of cockroaches.
Richard Feynman was one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century. The work he did in physics won him a nobel prize, but more than that he was also an incredible communicator. Once, when asked to prepare a lesson for undergraduates on a difficult topic in physics, he returned a day later and said, "You know, I couldn't do it. I couldn't reduce it to the undergraduate level. That means we really don't understand it." But times like this seem few and far between, given the number of difficult topics that he has managed to get across with such simplicity. He was a master of understanding, and of getting that understanding across to others.
Here's a rare video interview on Google Video, with the man. You'll see how he was a man who was more than just brilliant - first and foremost he was a truly "curious character".
Here you can listen to his Audio Lecture on Curved Space. A very interesting lecture on the geometry of our universe
(This is a large file. If you have a hard time downloading it, right click on the link and select "Save Target As" - at least if you're using internet explorer - this will allow you to see the progress of the file as you download it).