A Mexican tale about life

One day a rich Westerner who had made sqillions from speculating on the stock market was strolling along the beach and saw the fisherman pulling in his boat with his meager catch.

The rich Westerner stopped and remarked “not much of a catch today”. The fisherman replied “yes not much” but explained that his small catch was enough for him and his family.

The rich Westerner asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

“I sleep late, play with my children and have an afternoon’s rest under a coconut tree. In the evenings, I go to the local pub to see my friends, play some music, and sing a few songs….. I have a full and happy life.” replied the fisherman.

The rich Westerner ventured, “I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you…… You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat. With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have a large fleet. Instead of selling your fish to a middleman, you can negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to a city from where you can direct your huge enterprise.”

 

“And after that?” asked the fisherman.

“After that? That’s when it gets really interesting,” answered the rich Westerner, laughing, “When your business gets really big, you can start selling stock in your company and make millions!”

“Millions? Really? And after that?” pressed the fisherman.

“After that you’ll be able to retire, move out to a small village by the sea, sleep in late every day, spend time with your family, go fishing, take afternoon naps under a coconut tree, and spend relaxing evenings with friends…”

Author? 

Dongria Kondh’s resistance against Vedanta

Extracts:

"They [Vedanta, a mining company] want to take these rocks [bauxite, the raw material of aluminium] from the mountain. These rocks are the reason our children can live here. Because of these, the rain comes. The winter comes, the wind blows, the mountain brings all the water. If they take away these rocks, we'll all die. We'll lose our soul."

"Initially, they [Dongria Kondh, the locals] welcomed the company. But now they realize their mistake, because they live like dogs. Now they realize they've lost their land and their homes forever. 

"When people said they wouldn't leave, they [Vedenta] came with bulldozers at night and demolished their home."

"But now the bauxite dust is mixing into the wells and streams."

"Now they're trying to tell us that the company will do good things. But we say, "You don't have to take care of us. We can take care of ourselves. We'll lead our lives the way we know."

The Crisis in Education

We are in a multi-crisis world according to experts. Our civilization is in crisis. Civilization is failing because education is also in crisis -a chain of crisis, so to speak-. Values are no longer respected and kids are disoriented. Knowledge is being taken over by specialized skills, and many things that were known and considered the pillars of humanity are being forgotten. Wisdom is obsolete, nobody seeks nowadays to develop his/her soul and to find peace of mind. Habits are battled away by the constant changes and enormous leaps in civilization, i.e., those who learned a set of essential habits to live and appreciate the world as it was don't understand anymore and can't live in the new

Links and thoughts about static stretching

Many runners stretch before and after a workout or a competition. Often they do static stretching, i.e. they strech a muscle by elongating it, in a static posture for 15-30s or more. The idea is that if we stretch a muscle before and after an effort, it will gain power, elasticity, and it will decrease the chances of being injured.

However, you have to admit that the idea lacks of intuitivity: if you extend a rubber band to its maximum capacity and hold it that way for a long time and repeatedly, then when you relax the tension, at some point, you'll notice that it has lost its capacities, that it has become too loose. 

Researchers interested in the biomechanics of sport and physical activities tried to show if static stretching had any benefits. What they found out, when results weren't completely negative (I mean not corroborating the hypothesis that static stretching shows an identified benefit), is that things aren't clear. USA Track & Field conducts a study where results about health benefits are... Well, not clear. See the summary published by Gretchen Reynolds in Does stretching before running prevent injuries:

The study, one of the largest of its kind, involved almost 1,400 runners, from age 13 to past 60, who were assigned randomly to two groups. The first group did not stretch before their runs, while otherwise maintaining their normal workout routine: the same mileage, warm-up (minus any stretching) and so on. The second group stretched, having received photographs and specific instructions for a series of simple, traditional poses, like leaning over and touching toes, that focused on the calf, hamstring and quadriceps muscles. The volunteers were told to hold each stretch for 20 seconds, a technique known as static stretching. The entire routine required three to five minutes and was to be completed immediately before a run.
The volunteers followed their assigned regimens for three months. Predictably, since running, as a sport, has a high injury rate, quite a few became injured during the three months. About 16 percent of the group that didn’t stretch were hobbled badly enough to miss training for at least three days (the researchers’ definition of a running injury), while about 16 percent of the group that did stretch were laid up for the same amount of time. The percentages, in other words, were virtually identical. Static stretching had proved to be a wash in terms of protecting against injury. It “neither prevented nor induced injury when compared with not stretching before running,” the study’s authors concluded, raising the obvious corollary, so why in the world do so many of us still stretch?

To continue with the "non-clear" effect, Gretchen Reynolds, in To stretch or not to stretch, gathers some recent studies where it is shown that, if someone maintains the position of a static stretching for less than 30s, she/he will experience no "detrimental effects". Indeed it seems that over that length of time, you are likely to hurt yourself and diminish your capacities. But that leaves open the question of the benefit of static stretching in the less than 30s condition: does it help us to get injury-free? to be more powerful? faster? What's the point of stretching if it doesn't help us in any way? 

In Stretching: the truth, Gretchen Reynolds contrasts static stretching and dynamic stretching. It's an interesting read. According to GR and the background studies of this article, the problem with static stretching is that it doesn't fill the required conditions of stretching: i) increasing the range of motion of joints and, ii) warming up body's temperature.

Personally I stretch dynamically before some workouts, but not every time (some samples of dynamic stretching can be found in Stretching: the truth). If you have to run to save your life or save the life of someone, you will not have a hint 15mn before to warm up. You just run when it's needed.

Running as a global experience

Why do we run ? According to my experience, we run to flee (from an aggressor or from our anxiety), to hunt (a bus when we are late or a deer when we are hungry), to play (with our friends on Saturday morning). 

What do we do when we flee, hunt and play ? We don't just lift our legs one after the other. When we run after the bus, we use our eyes to check where it is and where it can stop. When we flee from an aggressor, we use our ears to listen to his pace, to check if he is far or close; and when we flee from anxiety, we enjoy the feeling of the wind on our face or the inner feeling of wellness. When we run with others in trails with uneven ground, we use the sensation of our feet to adjust our posture and pace, we use our ears to check that our friends are still with us and our eyes to see if they are ok and having fun. (Photo: Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), in a chase scene, his eyes fixed on the target, Bourne Ultimatum.)

Running is a global experience. With the feelings on my skin, I know the quality of the air; with the feelings on my feet, I know what is right under my feet where I stand. With my eyes I know what is just in front of me. With my nose, I know what I can't see, what is behind the next bush. With my ears, I know how things move in any direction, especially what is behind me and on my sides. The touch for the present and where I stand; the hearing for the past and what is behind me and on my sides; the view for the short-term future and what is right in front of us; the smell/ taste for the long-term future and what is far ahead.

Being mindful of my sensory system helped me to get rid of pressure of performance, and improved my technique and posture. Indeed I think we have this finely atune and precise global sensory system for one and only one thing: to adapt, to adjust to our environment. It's not our will or desires that shape our behavior, but the interaction between our capacities and the environment. It's not a pair of shoes with flying wings that dictates if I can run fast everywhere, but how my body can react to my environment with its capacities. If you start thinking about how it hurts to run on sharp rocks, and start thinking about the reason behind this kind of pain (I mean ache not suffering), you begin to realize that your sensory system is not just bothering you and preventing you to achieve your PR, but telling you how to adjust to your environment with the capacities you have. The interaction between the environment and our capacities show us how we can adapt to the features of our environment with efficiency and safety. (Consequence: don't mess with things that alter your sensory system and your brain chemistry, or seclude your sensory system from its environment.)

Why not standing still before running instead of rushing into things without anticipation ? Why not paying attention to this mechanism to know ourselves and our environment during a physical effort, instead of disregarding what we can do and where we are ? Why not unplugging the mp3 and paying attention in running to the functionning of our sensory system? Our capacities might be sharpened. Why not smelling the air to see what kind of plants, flower or ground is ahead, seeing what kind of obstacles and challenge are in front, listening to what can come from any sides? It might be useful.

Parutions du recueil "La Philosophie expérimentale"

Les éditions Vuibert font paraître un volume de recueil d'articles sur la philosophie expérimentale : Dutant, J., Machery, E., Knobe, J., Nahmias, E., Cova, F., Nichols, S., (eds) (2011), La Philosophie expérimentale. Paris : Vuibert. 

J'ai traduit l'article de Nahmias, Morris, Nadelhoffer, et Turner : L'incompatibilisme est-il intuitif ?

The mystery of the sunstone

In sagas recording Viking navigational stories, it's written that they used stones that could point to the sun in any conditions. A study, directed by Guy Ropars (University of Rennes)  and published by the Proceedings of the Royal Society, shows that they may have used a mineral called iceland spar, a form of calcite. The passage of sunlight polarises it, which means that light from the sky points towards the sun, in certain conditions.
Source : the Economist, Discovery News.

MAJ  (19/11/2011) : someone I know reacted to this post by saying that sometimes we have the feeling that with our technology we can do more things that we ever did, but often it's just that we have forgotten how we did it before. Moreover, even if with technology we are able to do things that were forgotten, just look at the cost. Vikings could navigate with a stone. We need GPS. What goes with GPS ? A manufactory, powered by an electrical station. A satellite in the sky, that needs to be launched by a rocket, built by another manufactory, etc.

The 100-up exercise for proper running technique and posture

Christopher McDougall, author of Born to Run, published a paper in the New York Times where, among many other things, he describes a good training to obtain a proper technique and a good posture: the 100-up exercise. With his talent as a narrator, he narrates how he digged up this secret, from W. G. George. Here is the description of the exercise:

The 100-Up consists of two parts. For the “Minor,” you stand with both feet on the targets and your arms cocked in running position. “Now raise one knee to the height of the hip,” George writes, “bring the foot back and down again to its original position, touching the line lightly with the ball of the foot, and repeat with the other leg.”
That’s all there is to it. But it’s not so easy to hit your marks 100 times in a row while maintaining balance and proper knee height. Once you can, it’s on to the Major: “The body must be balanced on the ball of the foot, the heels being clear of the ground and the head and body being tilted very slightly forward. . . . Now, spring from the toe, bringing the knee to the level of the hip. . . . Repeat with the other leg and continue raising and lowering the legs alternately. This action is exactly that of running.”

Here is Christopher McDougall showing how it's done:


He then published two blog posts related to injuries, posture and the 100-up exercise: the barefoot MD, in his own words, 100-up and the vampire bite (aka, plantar fasciitis).
Some interesting comments on McDougall's post:

• Sweat science
• New York Times Health
• Runblogger

The finest traceurs in Parkour

How to train in Parkour, according to these amazing traceurs? Play, play and play.

High fat diet & digestion of pythons

Interesting article to appear in Science this week reported in the National Geographic about the swelling of organs in pythons in the after-meal period. Reseachers shows that there is a link between blood high level of fatty acids and the swelling of organs. The purpose of this process is to speed up digestion. The remaining question is how lipids causes the swelling.