William James wrote that controlling attention is at ‘the very root of judgement, character and will’. He also noted that controlling attention is much easier said than done. This is unfortunate because almost every impressive human achievement is, at heart, a feat of attention. Art, science, technology — you name it — someone, somewhere had to concentrate, and concentrate hard. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to be able to concentrate without effort? Not to feel the strain of directing attention, just to experience a relaxed, intense, deep focus? So naturally the million dollar question is: how can attention be improved? Psychologists are fascinated by the sometimes fantastical claims made for meditation, particularly in its promise of improving attention. It certainly seems intuitively right that meditation should improve attention — after all meditation is essentially concentration practice — but what does the scientific evidence tell us? Does meditation improve attention? The problem with attention is that it naturally likes to jump around from one thing to another: attention is antsy, it won’t settle — this is not in itself a bad thing, just the way it is. Attention’s fidgety nature can be clearly seen in the phenomenon of ‘binocular […]
ATLANTA — It’s been two months since 2-year-old Cori pulled the gold stud from her left earlobe, and the piercing is threatening to close as her mother, Maggie Anderson, hunts for a replacement. It’s not that the earring was all that rare-but finding the right store has become a quest of Quixotic proportions. Maggie and John Anderson of Chicago vowed four months ago that for one year, they would try to patronize only black-owned businesses. The ‘Empowerment Experiment’ is the reason John had to suffer for hours with a stomach ache and Maggie no longer gets that brand-name lather when she washes her hair. A grocery trip is a 14-mile odyssey. ‘We kind of enjoy the sacrifice because we get to make the point … but I am going without stuff and I am frustrated on a daily basis,’ Maggie Anderson said. ‘It’s like, my people have been here 400 years and we don’t even have a Walgreens to show for it.’ So far, the Andersons have spent hundreds of dollars with black businesses from grocery stores to dry cleaners. But the couple still hasn’t found a mortgage lender, home security system vendor or toy […]
Having worked for 25 years at fragile archaeological sites in Peru, UCLA archaeologist Charles ‘Chip’ Stanish held his breath when the online auction house eBay launched more than a decade ago. ‘My greatest fear was that the Internet would democratize antiquities trafficking, which previously had been a wealthy person’s vice, and lead to widespread looting,’ said the UCLA professor of anthropology, who directs the UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. Indeed, eBay has drastically altered the transporting and selling of illegal artifacts, Stanish writes in an article in the May/June issue of Archaeology, but not in the way he and other archaeologists had feared. By improving access to a worldwide market, eBay has inadvertently created a vast market for copies of antiquities, diverting whole villages from looting to producing fake artifacts, Stanish writes. The proliferation of these copies also has added new risks to buying objects billed as artifacts, which in turn has worked to depress the market for these items, further reducing incentives to loot. ‘For most of us, the Web has forever distorted the antiquities trafficking market in a positive way,’ Stanish said. Looting, which is illegal, is widely recognized as destructive to cultural […]
Bill Clinton tried it in college – but didn’t inhale. Barack Obama inhaled. ‘Frequently,’ he once quipped. ‘That was the point.’ Bob Dylan sang about it: ‘Everybody must get stoned.’ Weed, pot, grass, doobie, Mary Jane – whatever you call it, there is no mistaking the pungent smell of burning joints or their impact on California culture for decades. But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger opened a new front for discussion this week, saying that while it’s not time to legalize pot, he’s willing to talk about it as a revenue-raising measure. The off-the-cuff remark by the well-known governor of the nation’s largest state has sparked fresh debate about whether societal attitudes are shifting as 1960s hippies move beyond middle age. ‘It’s time to acknowledge that marijuana prohibition has been a catastrophic failure and we need a new approach,’ said Aaron Smith of the Marijuana Policy Project’s California branch. Others disagree. ‘Why on Earth would any sane person want to add yet another mind-altering, health-compromising substance to the array of substances that compromise one’s five senses?’ said John Lovell, lobbyist for the California Police Chiefs Association and various other law enforcement groups. […]
President Obama’s critical meeting with Binyamin Netanyahu next week has become the acid test for the Administration’s commitment to peace in the Middle East, King Abdullah of Jordan said yesterday. The monarch does not conceal his feelings about the Israeli leader. He described their last encounter – 10 years ago when he had just come to the throne – as the ‘least pleasant of his reign. But he, and President Mubarak of Egypt, are expected to meet the Israeli leader before his trip to Washington, where the future course of the region could be decided. The King said that he was prepared to believe what Israelis have told him - that a right-wing Government in Israel is better able to deliver peace than the Left. ‘All eyes will be looking to Washington, he said. ‘If there are no clear signals and no clear directives to all of us, there will be a feeling that this is just another American Government that is going to let us all down. If Israel procrastinated on a two-state solution, or if there was no clear American vision on what should happen this year, the ‘tremendous credibility that Mr Obama had […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
