Ethnicity and Seperatist Movements

Basques in Spain from CNN - Basque Movement (est. 1959) labeled a terrorist group by the US.

Maoists (Naxals or Naxalites) in India from CNN - Suspected terrorist activity in northeastern India.  These guys have been at it since 1960.

Big Question always arises with students as we are trying to understand the idiosyncracies of the Maoist movement here in Nepal (official est. 1996) - What is the connection between these self-proclaimed separatists?  Do they have similar goals? methods? are they connected by anything other than morphed ideology from Mao's Cultural Revolution in China?  How closely are they following traditional Maoist ideology?  Are they taking cues from each other?

Sanjib ji was telling me the other day that it was only just recently that the Naxalites in India had formally acknowledged the Maoists here in Nepal as a group they could look up to and emulate as they had truly been able to reform government and strive toward the goals set by their ideologies. 

Remains to be seen, no?

The Story of Stuff

This video is one of the most important teaching tools I've found for taking a systems approach to talking about responsible consumption. Have a look.
"You cannot run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely."

Also some good resources to put global consumption into perspective:

That book about comparing the world's stuff
Cradle to Cradle - William McDonough

Obama's international diplomacy

So, how's it going for our "young, charismatic" leader?

This article from the Economist talks well about the embarassment that insued because Mr. President bowed to the Japanese Emperor.

Here, another Economist article talks through "Amateur Hour at the White House," with quotes from folks presiding over the Council for Foreign Relations.  Interesting to me that the Economist quotes CFR - I wonder if readers know who/what they are...

In general, regarding Mr. President, I'm still left with the question -

Penchant for conciliation is excellent - being viewed as passive isn't so excellent. Where's the balance?

How to Conduct Research

From the Peace and Collaborative Development Network.

Here's the link to 10 Steps to Developing Effective Research.

This would be good for teaching FSS seminar or Exhibition.  Could use a bit of adapting for different aged researchers. 

Easier Said...

"Freedom means being able to choose how we respond to things. When wisdom is not well-developed, it can be easily obscured by the provocations of others. In such cases we may as well be animals or robots. If there is no space between an insulting stimulus and its immediate conditioned response—anger—then we are in fact under the control of others. Mindfulness opens up such a space, and when wisdom is there to fill it one is capable of responding with forbearance. It’s not that anger is repressed; anger never arises in the first place."

-Andrew Olendzki, "Calm in the Face of Anger," Tricycle, Fall 2006

The Nonverbal Advantage by Carol Kinsey Goman

Non Verbal Communication can build trust.

Within seven seconds of meeting people, they have already formed their first impression of you.

93 % of the messages people receive have nothing to do with what you actually say.

Four Points -

1. The Gaze - two types of eye contact. Business gaze - apex at the forehead. signals no-nonsense approach. Social gaze - apex at the mouth. Social gaze signals interest. Can be misinterpreted as flirting. Can be confusing to mix them. Women need to be aware that to be taken seriously in business encounters, don't use social gaze.

2. Head Tilt - signal of interest and involvement. positive cues, but feminine gesture indicating submission. also can indicate interest.

3. Body Orientation - degree of face, shoulders, and feet facing a person indicates the status or level of like of that person. Toward you = positive attitude about you. Direct orientation is offputting for men; It's confrontational. Men position themselves on oblique angles. Women are comfortable facing each other. When approaching a male colleague, do so from the side.

4. Mirroring - we subconsiously mirror each other signaling connection or engaged. signals 'like' or 'agreement.' goes both ways - when someone's mirroring you, they like/agree with you. when you use mirroring, you're making others more comfortable through positive relation with the other person.

Miss Thang also talks about the eyebrow lift upon meeting someone - like when you're walking down a busy street full of people and you happen to recognize someone in the crowd.  This gesture tells them that they are important or interesting.  What happens when you do this to someone in the first seven seconds... ??  Positive impression, methinks.

Free Boat Ride for Three

Self Concept and Identity

Greg from IDP shares some insight from Yale research on concepts of self and identity:

We used to think that the hard part of the question "How can I be happy?" had to do with nailing down the definition of happy. But it may have more to do with the definition of I. Many researchers now believe, to varying degrees, that each of us is a community of competing selves, with the happiness of one often causing the misery of another.

 IDP post here includes many book suggestions for further reading about identity concepts in Buddhism

You, too, can spout Postmodern Bullshit!

Postmodern bullshit Generator.

What fun!  Though, it makes my brain hurt.  Y'all need to give it a rest.

Alan Sokal's hoax paper that threw the postmodern egoism into a tizzy.

Alan Sokal's website

Music Themes: Writing, letters

If I Wrote You - Dar Williams
The Letter - Natalie Merchant

Themes - Music
Minor feel giving way to major resolutions at the end of phrases. - creates melancholy, insistent feel that does resolve phrase after phrase. 
Merchant's melody
fingerpicking -

Themes - Lyrics
Letter-writing to tell one's true feelings, rather than saying.
hopefullness, unrequited love, resignation, the need to express the feeling disregarding the reaction.
Fake idealized relationship ? 

Music Themes: Water

The Ocean - Dar Williams
River - Joni Mitchell
Washing of the Water - Peter Gabriel
The Lighthouse's Tale - Nickel Creek

Themes - Music
undulating melodies, repeated musical themes
warm, calm major chords with moving countermelody lines in different layers
feeling of driving forward, no matter the tempo

Themes - Lyrics
loss, overpowering, 'letting go', cleansing, seeing things from a new perspective that wasn't available before, opening, drowning, inner knowing

Vocabulary

poshlost - n. (poshlostnik) - pretentious, vulgar, prurient, bigoted, prejudiced, narrow-minded.  comes from - Nibokov - "deflater of pretention" russian author.

Either you're With Us, or you're With Us

John Marks - founder and president of Search for Common Ground is a hero of mine.

Amidst the debate of President Obama's international diplomacy, many different voices emerge - hatred, frustration, lack of understanding, support, vehement support, and admiration. John and Susan's article falls in the 'support' category, in my opinion.

Existential Debate:
How is it possible that every president/leader/boss has the same amount of aversion/attraction to them? I would say the same statement above while inserting George W. Bush's name for Obama's. Does that make anyone else think?

New Winter Coat

I am going to get a coat made while I'm here. It is getting wicked cold in KTM. I want one that covers my butt and keeps it warm, but is shape fitting (small on top, high-wasted, generous hip area), and has a hip silhouette. These are the ones I like:

I like the color and the waist, and the hood, of course.

Really like the collar and shape of this one, but a little fancy for my city living

This is my fave of them all, but I think it is too short to keep my butt warm.

and this one looks warm. I'm shivering right now.

Melanoma

I've come dangerously close to skin cancer. Thanks to my generous former employer and the affordable Indian healthcare system, I've been able to keep tabs on what's manifesting itself on my skin. It's a swift, silent killer (as so many things are), so detection early and often is good.

Check this Guardian article out.

Existential debate:
We all want to live a long healthy life, even if we can't articulate it - but if we're going to die anyway eventually, why spend thousands on heath care to keep us alive? What's the point? What's our human responsibility to advocate for our own lives?

Death of Innocents?

The Festival of Gadhimai happens every five years here in Kathmandu. It's happening today, this morning, actually. Thousands of animals are sacrificed to the Hindu god Gadhimai many in thanks for emergence from difficult times. Your son was sick for a long time, you prayed a lot at the temple for him to get better - making wishes that if he gets better, you'll make a sacrifice to the goddess. Now, he's just gotten better, you offer the goddess the blood of a waterbuffalo. You were drowning in debt, and prayed a lot at the temple for good fortune to smile upon you, a family member helps you out, you offer a chicken to Gadhimai in thanks for her help with your problem. This article talks about the fury and violence with which the animals are killed, and how one killer thinks about the offerings.

There's a vegetarian version of this festival called "Chhath" which happens once a year - images here. The setting sun and the rising sun are greeted with offerings of coconuts, fruit, tikka, incense, and fire. The coconut is the offering that simulates the act of killing - the coconut is smashed and the milk represents blood offered to the god/goddess. Then, the coconut meat is given back to the offerer as prashad (or blessing from the god).

As we see with Hinduism, it's not what you believe, but what you do that is important to the pantheon of unlimitless gods and goddesses. Animal sacrifice is particularly common to godesses like Kali and Durga, powerful females who, it may seem have an insatiable bloodlust (vampires??), but maybe a more subtle explanation could be that when you take the life of another being in the name of these goddesses, you really mean it.

Animal rights activists in other countries are pissed. This year, the festival has drawn a lot of attention, especially by Ram Bahadur Bomjon, who it is rumored wanted to stop the sacrifices.

None of the program staff offered up sacrifices this year. They and their families are all doing just fine. In fact, one of the staff told me that he has never made such a promise to the goddess (That he will sacrifice the life of another being if he could just _______ (fill in the blank)), though he did say that his aunt and uncle had offered many times for his success or his health.