Our darling died in my lap at noon today.

Luna - an orca, a whale, a teacher, a messenger, a chief, a spirit, a dream, a friend, a warning, a test, an education, an experience, a realization, a protector, an awakening, an equal.

luna died today after being hit by a large tug boat. may his spirit be forever free

www.reuniteluna.com for news on the story

http://lunastewardship.blogspot.com/

The London Sunday Telegraph is reputed to have called A Desirable Residence by Madeleine Wickham "witty and wise," and it is almost difficult to add a lot more about this fairly well-written, plot-driven novel about average, middle-class Brits in mid-life crises. As circumstances of their various crises draw them together, they seem to prey on each other, exascerbating their own and each other's crises further.

Real-estate problems, buying, selling, and renting, form the initial linkages, though other crises soon intervene, including adultery, school exams, fraud, indebtedness, money-laundering, thwarted ambitions, envy, loneliness and just plain boredom. The four young people, children of the adult figures, are sketched very well and their stories are perhaps the most compelling, told as they are with a view to the intensity of adolescent angst, ennui, searching and vulnerability. This novel is in no way profound or moving, nor a page-turner, though it is an interesting, enjoyable read, an accurate and insightful portrayal of the very real if ordinary, uncomfortable, awkward, and embarrassing messes most of us find ourselves in from time to time thoughout our lives.

As in real life, there are a lot of loose ends that go unexplained, and much of life's less flattering detritus is swept aside, where hopefully, as the characters plod on, it will lie out of sight, gradually to be passed over, if not forgotten. The ending is a bit like a fairy tale, though perfectly plausible and real enough, as if charity, forgiveness, atonement and repentence, practised in sincere measure, can turn back at least some of the tide.

Categories: book, bookzen, novel, a, desirable residence, madeleine, wickham, bookblog, blog, literary, reviews

You can see the eclipse reversed in miniature on the left

Please sign this petition,only 5 more days til the Canadian seal hunt begins.
www.protectseals.org/?source=gabac8

I understand that the Canadian fisheries is in trouble and that many fishermen are unable to support their families. Also there is a belief that seals have contributed to the crash of fish populations. But I believe this way of solving the problem is .... horrible!

One of the problems is also the market. Are seal skin coats becoming popular again? If you have any friends who are thinking of buying one (?????) please ask them to think about where it came from.

I was on a whale watch boat in the 1970's before the marine mammal protection act was in place. It was spring and quite cold. A very friendly and enthusiastic woman was wearing the warmest thing there was in those days... a seal skin coat and couldn't understand why no one would talk to her.

Sometimes it is really hard to make the connection between the live animal and the things you wear or eat, I am guilty of that too.yeimaya
Photo © yeimaya

bloggzen - total immersion blogging technology innovation

Technorati has introduced tags, this might be a new concept for many of you but we have been using them for ages on Flickr, Del.icio.us and Furl. I could tag every word of this post just to show up in the pages tagged with tags, but it would take too long, When is Blogger going to put an add Technorati Tag button? Flickr tags are very usefull for finding photos to add to blog posts. (see above) Pehaps I should search the Flickr tags to find photos for my photoblog Flickrzen, no that would be too easy, the recently uploaded photos page is much more exciting!

Technorati - Where does the stuff on Technorati Tag pages come from?

The photos come from our friends at Flickr. Flickr is a great photo sharing community. If you'd like your photos to appear on our tag pages, join Flickr and post your photos there. And remember to tag 'them!

The links come from the nice folks at Del.icio.us and Furl. Del.icio.us and Furl are web-based bookmark managers. If you'd like to contribute links to Technorati Tag pages, you can join Del.icio.us or join Furl and post and tag some links.

The rest of the Technorati Tag pages is made up of blog posts. And those come from you! Anyone with a blog can contribute to Technorati Tag pages. There are two ways to contribute:

What's all this? This page shows all kinds of goodies from the web about tags. To contribute, just make a post to your blog about tags and include the link below. More Info »
tags

Flickr - What are tags?
You can give your photos a "tag", which is like a keyword. Tags help you find photos which have something in common. You can assign as many tags as you wish to each photo.

All of these delve into that uncharted land called how our grey matter works and how we can live better lives by knowing more about it. Each of these books has a delightfully different take on the subject, and "Mind Hacks" itself is full of references for further reading. Is it more than just a co-incidence that these books are all out right now, being talked about, blogged about, and voraciously read? Why this insatiable synchronicity of people wanting to know more about how we are made and how we think?

In more classical studies, "Mind Hacks" would be filed under physical and cultural anthropology. And though you will be introduced to words like limbic, cortex and cerebellum, keeping track of technical medical terms is not essential for understanding and learning much from this book. While it seems written for popular audiences, and uses everyday examples to illustrate how we as human beings tend to think, and why, "Mind Hacks" is helpfully structured to take you just as deep as you want to go.

As to whether the mind can be hacked, just ask a songwriter, movie producer or ad exec; though by "hacks," the authors really mean examples, and there are hundreds. For instance, why do we tend to see faces when we look at clouds? Why do we scrutinize other peoples' faces so intently? Why, if we see six of the same thing, do we tend to see the seventh object as the same, too, even if it isn't? Why do we smell chalk when we think of Dick, Jane, and that "silly, silly Spot?" What do we really find irresistibly interesting and what bores us to death? Did left-handed people evolve differently and why do they have more traffic accidents? Why are some people better at math? Why do sunglasses make the world more interesting visually? (It's all in the mind.) Why do people respond differently to the same instructions? And by implication, what is the best way to design a web page? All of this is covered in "Mind Hacks" including which sectors of the brain are responsible, and how the research was done.

"Mind Hacks" is a good starting place for exploring your mind, partly because it would fit nicely with some of the other books mentioned here and in the book itself, but also because Mind Hacks is at the center of an expanding culture of exploration and investigation of mental phenomena,including blogs about "Mind Hacks" and related phenomena (just technorati "Mind Hacks" for instance.) There are the sites of the book's publisher O'Reilly for starters and a page relating to topics covered in "Mind Hacks" about why posting flickr zeitgeist might be a distraction for people who actually want to read your blog, and there is the excellent "Mind Hacks" blog itself mindhacks.com, which does not seem to be accessible from the O'Reilly site. Both authors have their own blogs - Idiolect by Tom Stafford and Interconnected by Matt Webb.

"Mind Hacks" suggests that you can read it sequentially or dive in randomly.
Either way it is an accessible book about some of the curiously strange ways in which we think, remember, and respond, based on how we evolved and what was then and is now most important to us as biological organisms. Even better, it is totally overflowing with examples and simple exercises -- the "hacks" -- that you can do by yourself or with friends. Better yet, buy the book and give a "Mind Hacks" party! Ask your guests to open the book randomly, exclaim on the particular mental characteristic explained on that page, and then put everyone through the exercise or group discussion implied. Like, "How do you prefer your first cup of morning coffee, and how do you feel if you don't get it that way?" Pavlov got it right more than a hundred years ago.

And speaking of Pavlov's dogs, there is much in "Mind Hacks" to suggest that we humans share many of our emotions, thoughts and feelings with other animals, whose brain structures evolved similarly and whose reactions in research are so similar.

This is my favorite tree, I call it the Tree of Life, later it has huge heart shaped leaves and big mauve flowers rather like chestnut candles. Here one can see the remains of the seed pods.