How to Slow Down Now (Please Read Slowly)

How to Slow Down Now (Please Read Slowly)
zenhabits.net

In our rush-aholic world slowing down seems subversive. In the workplace we have to be seen to be working. Even though doing a task more slowly can often produce a result faster, many of us get caught up in unnecessary meetings and tasks. You may be suffering from too much speed. After all, you are reading this. We humans are not always-on, efficient machines that can run seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. Burning the candle at both ends results in, well, burnout.

Humans need rests, relaxation, and recreation. We need time to think about things, to clear the mind, and to have fun. But to a person overburdened with claims on her time, fun seems only a distant remembered state of mind.

Slowing down is a way to incubate, conserve, and harvest our energy, not about relief from boredom by just watching more TV or going shopping. You may have to confront boredom at first. Sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.
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2007 Darwin Awards

2007 Darwin Awards

Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.

Public Domain Books Reprints Service - PublicDomainReprints.org

PublicDomainReprints.org
An experimental non-commercial project to re-print public domain books

This is an experiment to see what the demand for reprints of public domain books would be. This free service can take a book from any of the supported sites such as the the Internet Archive, Google Books or Universal Library (books in public domain ONLY) and reprint it using Lulu.com. Books like 'David Crockett: his life and adventures' and 'The true Benjamin Franklin' can be yours at a click of a mouse.

4 New 'Blimp' Designs Bring Return of the Airship

Popular Mechanics

Always on the verge of a seeming comeback, airships are back in the spotlight, touting new technologies. The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency recently announced funding for an innovative, ballast-free airship technology created by Aeros Aero­nautical Systems, based outside Los Angeles. The Aeroscraft ML866's potentially revolutionary Control of Static Heaviness system compresses and decompresses helium in the 210-ft.-long envelope, changing this proposed sky yacht's buoyancy during takeoff and landings, Aeros says. It hopes to end the program with a test flight demonstrating the system. Other companies are planning their own first flights within the next few years. Each has a design that it promises will launch a new era of lighter-than-air transportation.

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the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci

the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci

Wordsmiths, avoid these words..

Wordsmiths, avoid these words..

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A "surge" of overused words and phrases formed a "perfect storm" of "post-9/11" cliches in 2007, according to a U.S. university's annual list of words and phrases that deserve to be banned.

Choosing from among 2,000 submissions, the public relations department at Michigan's Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie targeted 19 affronts to the English language in its well-known jab at the worlds of media, sports, advertising and politics.

The contributors gave first prize to the phrase "a perfect storm," saying it was numbingly applied to virtually any notable coincidence.

"Webinar" made the list as a tiresome non-word combining Web and seminar that a contributor said "belongs in the same school of non-thought that brought us e-anything and i-anything."

Similarly, the list-makers complained about the absurd comparisons commonly phrased "x is the new y," as in "(age) 70 is the new 50" or "chocolate is the new sex." "Fallacy is the new truth," commented one contributor.

Some words and phrases sagged under the weight of overuse, contributors said, citing the application of "organic" to everything from computer software to dog food.

In the same vein, decorators offering to add "pop" with a touch of color need new words, the list-makers said.

Such phrases as "post 9/11" and "surge" have also outlived their usefulness, they said. Surge emerged in reference to adding U.S. troops in Iraq but has come to explain the expansion of anything.