(no subject)

News: Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations

Not news: Obama stops wearing flag pin

News: All 3,200 South African miners pulled to safety

Not news: Wal-Mart opens holiday price war

News: Bird flu virus mutating into human-unfriendly form

Not news: Eh, I'm tired of hunting for not-news. (Most entertainment "news" would fall under this category and thus I won't go for the easy pickings.)

(no subject)

Comment on this post and I will pick seven of your interests. You then explain them in your journal and re-post.

alan watts: I've enjoyed just about everything I've read written by Mr. Watts. He had a particular knack of explaining philosophical treatises in clear, easy-to-understand prose for the layperson. I recommend The Wisdom of Insecurity to all of my friends, and I have bought several copies of it as gifts.

amygdala: This bit of the brain derives its name from the Greek; it means "almond-shaped". There is both a right and left amygdala (plural: amygdalae), and this part of one's neuroanatomy is the seat of the fear response. It is nestled near the hippocampus (it actually lies inside the temporal lobe) and is part of one of the oldest parts of the brain, the limbic system. Its activation helps "color" memories so that we learn to be cautious of particular stimuli.

hippies: I'm a flower-child who was born one generation too late. Free love; make love, not war; tune in, turn on, drop out--all slogans I keep near and dear to my heart (and often put into practice).

light energy: I suppose I should rename this interest to "photons", but I'm very interested in how light exists, interacts with other substances in the universe, and how the human eye interprets and transduces light.

roche limit: I'm still a novice when it comes to explaining what the Roche limit is, so I'll be lame and reference an outside source: "The Roche limit is the minimal distance, with respect to the center of a planet, at which a satellite is able to orbit without being destroyed by tidal forces. If the planet and the satellite have the same density, the Roche limit is 2.5 times the radius of the planet. Within this limit, the satellite is destroyed by tidal forces." Saturn's rings lie within its Roche limit.

symbolic interactionism: Again, I'll refer to a source other than myself: "'Symbolic interaction' refers [to the theory that] human interaction is mediated by the use of symbols, by interpretation, or by ascertaining the meaning of one another's actions." According to Herbert Blumer, "this mediation is equivalent to inserting a process of interpretation between stimulus and response in the case of human behavior." I first came into contact with this theory when reading articles by Susan Bordo; she is also listed as one of my interests.

vibration: Everything in the universe vibrates. There are few fundamental truths about the universe; I deeply appreciate this one.

Taken from supergee