firehose
Shared posts
There's Something Suspicious About This Ramen-Making Machine
Roaming 100 km a day, a young man survives by selling yoga to middle-class India
Vinod Kumar will not be around at the high-powered celebrations for International Yoga Day in the heart of Delhi. June 21 will be like any other day for the 25-year-old yoga instructor to Delhi’s upper middle class. Kumar will wake up, as usual, at the first hint of dawn, and by 5 AM, probably before the 37,500 mats have been laid out along Rajpath, he’ll leave his one-room house in Noida to travel along the vast circumference of the National Capital Region, setting the bodies of people from 20 to 60 years of age into yoga poses best suited to their needs.
The multi-million-dollar celebrations on Rajpath is for high priests of the yoga world, Kumar told me. “Famous gurus, owners of big ashrams, people like that,” he said, sweating from his 14-kilometre motorcycle ride from Mayur Vihar, where he finished the last class of the day at 7:30 PM, to Jangpura through rush-hour traffic.
The idea of an International Yoga Day, to be celebrated by 192 countries in the world, does indeed seem more focused on creating a spectacle than anything else. In Delhi, the event’s arrangements will be at par with Republic Day. It’s a show of numbers meant to ensure no one in the world ever doubts India’s ambition again: 1,400-metre stretch of Rajpath, 37,000 participants, 50 nationalities, 3,000 district police personnel standing guard, 1,500 traffic policemen, 150 CCTV cameras, Rs100 crore publicity budget. No wonder the organisers are leaving gaps between rows of participants for observers from Guinness book world record to assess the scale of things.
Yoga was survival
Kumar is small fry in India’s suddenly exploding yoga market. Over the five years that he has been in the business, he told me, yoga has taken a big leap in Delhi’s middle-income life: “I would say, simply, that when I began, I had to explain to everyone what yoga is and what it does for you, and now I don’t need to explain any of that to anyone.”
The mainstreaming of the stretching routine once considered the preserve of the holy and the middle-aged means that India’s hordes of job-seeking young view it as opportunity. There are no official numbers for people involved in teaching of yoga in the country, but according to a news report, 500,000 yoga teachers work with the Patanjali group alone, run by celebrity yoga guru and spiritual leader Baba Ramdev.
Yoga was survival for Kumar. The only son of a small farmer in Banka district of Bihar, Kumar had spent the free time between his secondary school examinations and high school admission at the world-renowned Bihar School of Yoga with headquarters in Munger, a short bus ride from his village. “I had been attracted to yoga for as long as I can remember. The free one-month course at the Bihar School was as much yoga as it was about developing one’s personality,” said Kumar. He was the first person in his family to attend high school, a fact his parents took pride in, until they were down with a financial crisis and Kumar had to take to train to Delhi as a 20-year-old high-school-pass with a thousand rupees in his pocket.
“What can a young man do in Bihar, where they are no companies to employ us? Even those with postgraduate degrees in Bihar have to work in the fields. It’s a hopeless place. I like Delhi. The amazing thing about Delhi is that everyone finds something to do here,” Kumar said.
Starting up
Within days of arriving in Delhi in 2010, where he lived in Mehrauli with a friend from back home, Kumar realised he could use turn his training in yoga into a way of employment. After getting a degree in teaching yoga from the Indira Gandhi National Open University in the same year, he started assisting a trainer who ran classes in his neighbourhood. “The money was okay—Rs8,000 to Rs9,000 a month—but the person treated me very badly, so a few months later, I told him he could keep whatever money he owed me as salary and quit the job,” said Kumar.
He decided to work for himself. “I created pamphlets advertising my yoga classes and had those distributed with newspapers in the Noida area, where I had moved to by then. Work kept coming as one client recommended me to another.”
Kumar isn’t overtly religious, although he believes deeply in the existence of God.Kumar’s clients fall into two categories, according to him: young professionals (“media, lawyers, corporate people”) who keep moving in and out of the city and the “Delhi circuit”—families with a sizeable number of members or social connections. Not everyone he teaches yoga is in it for the same reason, he stresses; young people mostly do it to achieve fitness and the old to beat illness. Not all of them approach yoga with the same philosophy, either. It’s only people above the age of 40, he said, who care about knowing the mythology behind yoga. “I give to each what they want. For the cynical, if they are not comfortable with listening to a recording to “aum” while they do yoga, I ask them to play whatever music they like.”
Kumar isn’t overtly religious himself, he said, although he believes deeply in the existence of God. What he doesn’t get is the brouhaha over yoga’s appropriation by the Hindutva lobby: “Yoga doesn’t belong to any religion in particular. What people don’t understand is that yoga itself is a religion.”
A decent life but not forever
Five years after Kumar started his own yoga enterprise, he has made a life for himself in Delhi: a roster of clients (14 to 15 at a time when the going is good), a growing reputation, a house, a few friends, and a fathomable future. The money is not a lot (he doesn’t want to go into numbers) or even consistent (“it’s a constant hunt to replace clients dropping out or moving town, and there is practically no work for the entire winter, when people feel too lazy”), but he likes being his own master, especially the part about going off to the village for the winter and doing nothing for two months. He is proud of having managed to pay for the treatment for his sick grandfather and the wedding of his older sister with his income.
He’s also aware that he can’t go much further in this field without speaking EnglishFor all the certainties he has created for himself over the years, Kumar doesn’t think he could live this way forever. He’s aware of the damage driving a motorcycle for over a hundred kilometres every day can do to his back and shoulders over time. He’s also aware that he can’t go much further in this field without speaking English: “It’s only after coming to Delhi that I realised how important it is in order to do well at any job. I have friends who know English and teach yoga to the foreigners, who pay enough that they only have to work for two months in a year—they can rest for the remaining time.”
In the few hours he has to himself during the afternoons, therefore, Kumar goes through his options. He studies for annual examinations at a college he has remotely joined in Bhagalpur for a graduate degree in political science; he keeps track of job openings in the railway; he researches courses for becoming an electrician at industrial training institutes.
Irrespective of the direction his life would take over the coming years, Kumar said, yoga would remain crucial to it. There are few things more satisfying to him than configuring his body into his favourite asanas: Chakrasana, Sirshasana, Sarvangasana, mayurasana, hansasana. In his imagining of the future, yoga will have gone from being a lifestyle choice to a necessity for wellbeing: “It won’t be thinkable for anyone to not practice yoga.”
We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.
"I used to think it was a given that at any comedy gig I attended Id have to grin through a number..."
 |
Courtney
shared this story
from  Super Opinionated.
|
“I used to think it was a given that, at any comedy gig I attended, I’d have to grin through a number of brutal jokes about my gender: about beating us, about raping us, about ranking us, about reducing our already dehumanised existence to a handful of insulting stereotypes. And I went ahead and grinned – because, I thought, that’s just how we joke.
We must have agreed. Someone must have signed a contract. This is the price if I want to be in the club. (And that’s not even touching on the way female comics are treated offstage.)
But, of course, there is no contract, and I’ll never fully be allowed in the club no matter how obedient I am. As long as sexism goes unchallenged, I’ll always be “just a girl”.”
-
What do the politically correct brain police have against venerable man comedians like Jerry Seinfeld? | Comment is free | The Guardian (via welkinalauda)
That quote continues:
“But because I’m a girl, my complaints about sexism are dismissed. It’s a loop. And that devaluation is vastly compounded for people of colour, trans people, gay people, disabled people – anyone who has spent the past few decades as a stock “edgy” punchline.”
Streets of Rage and Shenmue soundtracks on vinyl ⊟ Remastered...
Streets of Rage and Shenmue soundtracks on vinyl ⊟
Remastered with input from the original composers! On special translucent records! Man, these are nice. Priced at $27 each, they’ll ship in August or September, which gives me time to think real hard about whether I can deal with physical music media again.
SUPPORT TINY CARTRIDGE Join Club Tiny!
earthmoonlotus: sociolab: Do you ever think about the fact that the US has created and legitimized...
|
Courtney
shared this story
from Super Opinionated.
|
Do you ever think about the fact that the US has created and legitimized a system of institutionalized inequality by funding schools through property taxes? That basically a child’s education is only as good as the value of the property in their neighborhood. Funny how education is so often viewed as an equalizing factor when there is nothing equal about it.
I really don’t care if I’ve already reblogged this
So many animals are dying, scientists believe Earth has entered a sixth mass extinction
We’ve long known that human actions—cutting down forests, building cities and using up natural resources—puts animals in danger, and can even drive them out of existence. Now, a new study has found that vertebrates—or creatures with a backbone—are dying much, much faster than they should be.
A group of researches from Mexico and the US wanted to compare the rate of extinctions in the last century to what is known as the “background rate”—the rate at which species have died off in previous centuries. They found that vertebrates, or animals with a backbone, were dying at a rate 114 times faster than the overall background rate for vertebrates, based on a conservative estimate.
The news was especially grim for the adorable lemur, which may be one of the next vertebrate species to go extinct.
The research was published June 19 in the journal Science Advances. Scientists at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, as well as eminent universities in the US including Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, and Gainesville, Florida, contributed to the study.
Using the background rate as a guide, researchers said that only nine vertebrate extinctions should have occurred since 1900. In fact, 477 vertebrates became extinct during that time period, including 69 mammal species, 80 bird species, 24 reptiles, 146 amphibians, and 158 fish.
“These estimates reveal an exceptionally rapid loss of biodiversity over the last few centuries, indicating that a sixth mass extinction is already under way,” the paper states.
And those are the conservative estimates. “Our calculations very likely underestimate the severity of the extinction crisis,” noted study co-author Professor Paul Ehrlich. “There are examples of species all over the world that are essentially the walking dead.”
While the most famous mass extinction phase is the one which many scientists believe killed off the dinosaurs, there are five known extinction phases that predate it, including the Great Dying 248 million years ago in which 96% of species perished. The dinosaurs were finally finished off by an asteroid about 65 million years ago.
happyjadewithflowers: bitterpunktrash: thealogian: wittgensteinsmister: docprofsmith: When will...
|
Courtney
shared this story
from Super Opinionated.
|
When will people finally understand that Jurassic Park is not a horror story about fucking with the natural order and bring dinosaurs back, but a horror story about capitalism fucking with science for profits.
ok but it’s both has no one read a michael crichton book all of them are about people doing science but then THEY WENT TOO FAR
can you blame them if they haven’t michael crichton is a terrible author
the man made a critic who disliked his book into a child molester in one of his books he was a petty asshole whose books were not well written
Also Michael Crichton’s idea of ‘science going TOO FAR’ includes ‘thinking global warming is a real thing’
Fun fact – Jurassic Park was actually a screed against the concept of Pleistocene Rewilding, which was an idea that got some traction in the 1980s and early 90s.
The idea was based on several flawed notions and several good ones, and speaking especially as an Indigenous person it’s difficult to discuss why Crichton’s issues with it were inane or driven from a primarily conservative social stance, without actually attempting to defend the idea itself. But the gist of it was as follows:
“Ecosystems in much of the world are devastated by recent human activities such as agriculture, urban development and industrial pollution. This has affected plants and animals alike. Trees don’t grow as big or live as long, vegetation profiles have been altered, and in many places the surviving wildlife patterns are badly out of balance. The extinction of Pleistocene megafauna such as mammoths and other large herbivores, and the severe reductions of the large herbivores that survived to the present day, have only made this worse, because large herbivores alter ecosystems and large predators regulate their behavior.”
Pausing here because all of this is true, after a fashion – it’s just leaving out the critical fact that humans have always played a role in this, and it’s not an inherently bad/disruptive one. Indigenous folks the world over have, through direct management and systems of relations, technology, et cetera, established balanced and productive ecosystems that defy the expectations of the people who came up with this stuff. It’s practically meaningless to talk about the first thing without an honest engagement with the second, and Pleistocene Rewilding didn’t really grapple with it at all. When it DID grapple with it, it was mostly to dismiss the idea that climate matters much and to promote the notion that human hunting of the megafauna wiped them out, and was the sole or at least primary cause of the expansion of tundra. (This is even more politically loaded where Indigenous folks are concerned.)
But. Moving on with it.
“So, we propose creating a huge park somewhere in North America or Siberia that attempts to reproduce the types of species profiles and ecosystems of the late Pleistocene, and then monitor the long-term ecological effects. Since many of those species are extinct or extirpated locally, we’ll have to get creative with what we choose.” From there it all gets a bit variable and specific, because it’s very regionally sensitive.
One idea was to reintroduce the Bolson Tortoise to much of North America – this animal used to be very common throughout most of the modern era until even recent times, though it’s now quite endangered and limited to a specific range in northern Mexico. The reason is that these tortoises have a huge effect on soil humidity – large populations of them make the ground more fertile and more able to support plants. You’d make dry areas of the Southwest and interior grasslands less dry if you could breed and release them in large enough numbers. Reintroducing camels & llamas (which North America used to have) was considered. More speculative ideas called for elephants to inhabit the niches held by some species of mammoth and mastodont.
Well, of course, you couldn’t do this without carnivores. You’d have to give wolves free reign in such a space, and also find living relatives of the many species of big cats and bears. Cheetahs and lions were suggested (they used to live in the Americas and in Siberia…)
You couldn’t do all of this just randomly wherever – people object when you release lions and elephants into their backyards. But a researcher in Russia managed to set up a Pleistocene Park in the northern Sakha Republic, to test whether the reintroduction of large herbivores could recreate the Arcitc Grassland biome in favor of tundra. This park actually still exists; no new predators have been introduced AFAIK but many herbivores have.
If this is beginning to sound like the setup to some kind of science fiction book in which people go too far and someone gets eaten, congratulations, you’re catching on to the origins of Jurassic Park as a cranky screed.
Watch: The US destroyed a literal ton of illegal ivory in Times Square
Tusks carved with African motifs, trinkets silhouetted with the shapes of tigers or Chinese men, and ornamented jewelry–one ton of confiscated ivory items in total—was turned to dust Friday, June 19 in the middle of New York City’s iconic Times Square.
Most of the material destroyed had been seized from Victor Gordon, the owner of an antique shop in Philadelphia and a prolific ivory smuggler. His collection of elephant ivory, one of the largest such collections in the US, was worth around $1 million. A federal judge once called his case “one of the most egregious incidents in US trafficking history;” Gordon is currently serving a 30-month prison sentence.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the government agency that coordinated the Times Square demonstration, believes that as long as illegal ivory exists, there will be poachers and buyers like Gordon willing to sell it. The logic behind destroying ivory, therefore, is that the only way to destroy the black market is to literally destroy all available stock. Other countries including Kenya, Philippines, China, France, and Belgium have also destroyed confiscated ivory. (Other specialists, however, have argued that ivory scarcity can generate more demand, creating an incentive for criminals to kill more elephants.)
A continued problem, at home and abroad
The New York City crush comes three weeks after China, the world’s biggest ivory market, announced that it would eventually phase out its (legal) manufacturing and ivory trade. Experts say the trade provides cover for illegal poachers and merchants.
This is the second time the US government has crushed such a large amount of ivory. In 2013, six tons were reduced to dust near a warehouse in Denver. But crushing the ivory in one of country’s most symbolic crossroads sends a clear message: we are all part of the problem. Indeed, the US remains the second largest market for ivory, after China.
Aware of the problem, President Barack Obama’s administration has pushed for a “near total ban” on the domestic ivory trade that would only allow the sale or purchase of certified antiques. Although not yet implemented, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell tells Quartz she is confident the new restrictions will be freed from their bureaucratic red tape “soon.”
Still, time is running out for the majestic mammals. An estimated 96 elephants are slaughtered in Africa every day for their ivory: about one animal every 15 minutes. Recent census data conducted by Tanzania and Mozambique revealed both countries have lost more than half of their elephant populations in the last five years. The poaching industry also supports criminal organizations like the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, the Janjaweed in Sudan, and al-Shabab, al Qaeda’s arm in Somalia.
Hero child nutmegs DeMarcus Cousins, then scores in his face
INSTANT CAMP LEGEND
And this was the last time DeMarcus Cousins underestimated a kid:
You see what had happen was... pic.twitter.com/tINRxnNri9
— DeMarcus Cousins (@boogiecousins) June 20, 2015
This is Boogie's "DeMarcus Cousins Elite Skills Camp," and it's the typical session in which campers get to attempt scoring on the 7' basketball man. Cousins obviously isn't trying very hard to start the exchange, but then the kid successfully puts the ball through his legs and Cousins spins around with what looks to me like a genuine effort to block the reverse finish ... but it's got juuuust the right arc to soar over his fingers and drop in! And the crowd goes wild!
Look at this li'l hero having the proudest moment of his life:
/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3809582/Screen_Shot_2015-06-20_at_9.09.54_AM.0.png)
BOW TO YOUR NEW KING.
By law, Cousins must now retire and forfeit his multi-million-dollar Sacramento Kings contract to this little boy.
The New York Daily News had a laugh about A-Rod's 3000th hit
Our @NYDNSports back page featuring Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez's 3,000th hit — a home run pic.twitter.com/00Sc5u9HtF
— Amara Grautski (@AmaraGrautski) June 20, 2015
Alex Rodriguez joined the 3,000-hit club at Yankee Stadium last night, but The New York Daily News poking fun at A-Rod's 3,***th hit was even better.
This is how SB Nation commemorated A-Rod's 3,000th hit, a pretty cool moment either way.
Baseball Pigeon is in the infield making it impossible to field
Whoa, that's a super brave pigeon!
A crazy pigeon was lurking around Milwaukee's second baseman Hernan Perez last night. Looks like the bird was pretty hungry, hence why he was in no mood to leave his feast on seeds.
But the show must go on! The Rockies' Ben Paulsen then sent a hit directly at the pigeon, which made Perez have a brain snap, leading to his hesitation.
Let's now take the time to remember cricket seagull!
Don't worry though, he walked away ok!
H/T For The Win
mellarkish:*pretends to be cool and chill but is actually constantly worried about the widespread...
*pretends to be cool and chill but is actually constantly worried about the widespread death of bee populations*
'Dozens of Saudi, Gulf Arab students visited Israeli embassy in Washington' - Jerusalem Post Israel News
Jerusalem Post Israel News |
'Dozens of Saudi, Gulf Arab students visited Israeli embassy in Washington' Jerusalem Post Israel News The students were given diplomatic briefings by embassy staff and even had their pictures taken with them, the documents unveiled by WikiLeaks revealed. Flag of Saudi Arabia. (photo credit:Courtesy). Share on Facebook Share on Twitter. Dozens of ... How leaked Saudi documents might really matterWashington Post (blog) Purported Saudi Documents Published by WikiLeaks Show Tensions with IranWall Street Journal Saudi accused Qatar of stirring up trouble in YemenThe Hindu Tehran Times -The Guardian -India Today all 648 news articles » |
Website With Racist Screed And Photos Of Dylann Roof Found
Uber Isn't Letting Its Drivers Carry Guns Anymore
Old Heinz Ketchup QR Code Leads Man To A Porn Site
FBI Director Says Charleston Shooting Not An Act Of Terrorism
harinef: primary-objects: Hari Nefwearing coat by J.W....
|
Courtney
shared this story
from Super Opinionated.
|
Hari Nef wearing coat by J.W. Anderson for <a href="http://vogue.com" rel="nofollow">vogue.com</a> - Photographed by Ben Grieme & Styled by Taylor McNeill
On International Yoga Day, yoga is just politics by other means
The business of yoga is steadily growing and includes an over $10 billion industry in the United States alone. Yet, some fear that yoga has been forgotten in India where it is being replaced by damaging “foreign” habits, such as eating unhealthy food and remaining stationary at desk jobs for most of the day. That is why Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken it upon himself and his government to reclaim yoga from the yoga enthusiasts abroad, who are perceived to have co-opted the practice.
Modi’s recent decision to appoint a Minister of Yoga in Shripad Naik reflects his ongoing efforts to reclaim yoga for India. The Ministry’s strategy is to expand the role of yoga in key areas of Indian civil society, including schools, hospitals, and police training centers. This strategy widened last year when Modi proposed designating an annual internationally recognized yoga day to the UN General Assembly. The resolution was adopted in December 2014 after a unanimous vote in its favor. June 21 is now the “International Day of Yoga,” and the Modi government has made extensive plans to celebrate the first Yoga Day.
Modi’s government has been busy writing a “Common Yoga Protocol” for Yoga Day and planning events in India and at India’s embassies across the world. The most hyped event, however, was in Delhi, where Modi hosted a 35-minute public demonstration of yoga postures with the hope of qualifying for the Guinness Book of World Records, for the biggest yoga class ever held.
Although Modi’s government assured the public that participation in Yoga Day was optional, senior officials were subjected to enormous pressure to be at the event at 7am on Sunday, June 21, and to publicly contort their bodies into yoga postures. In fact, Modi’s government sent out a memorandum advising them to prepare for yoga day, warning that the record-breaking title would be at risk if officials arrive ill-prepared.
All of these efforts to make the first Yoga Day memorable serve as a key part of Modi’s strategy to reclaim yoga for India, and gain international power and respect through recognition that India has contributed the gift of yoga to the world. Any attempts to define yoga in ways that bind it within Hindu or Indian identities and accordingly outside of others, are problematic.
The preparations, however, have not gone without obstacles and glitches. In fact, there is no end in sight to the debates over Modi’s extensive plans to celebrate Yoga Day with rising tensions across a wide spectrum of Indians: Hindu nationalists, for example, suggest that reclaiming yoga for India is a key part of rightfully establishing it as a Hindu nation, while religious minorities fear the government will privilege Hindu practices and ideas, in what is supposed to be a secular democracy.
On one end of the spectrum, one member of Modi’s conservative Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Yogi Adityanath has said that opponents of Yoga Day—or those who think surya namaskar, a sequence of postures believed by some to be Hindu should be excluded from the yoga protocol—should “leave Hindustan” or “drown themselves in the sea or live in a dark room for the rest of their lives.” On the other end, the All India Council of the Union of Muslims (AIMIM) has appealed to Muslims to perform namaz or “prayers” on Yoga Day in protest against what it considers the BJP’s attempt “to promote its saffron agenda.” These debates over the government’s decisions regarding Yoga Day are significant to worldwide disputes over what yoga is and to whom it belongs.
According to government protocol, yoga is an ancient Indian “spiritual discipline” that leads to health and “leads to the union of individual consciousness with universal consciousness,” resulting in “freedom, referred to as mukti, nirvāna, kaivalya or moksha.” This definition of yoga captures one Hindu understanding of yoga’s aims while ignoring the wide variety of other yogic aims found among Hindu traditions alone much less the variety of aims practitioners from other traditions have attributed to yoga throughout its history. Given such a narrowly conceived definition of yoga, it is not surprising that religious minorities fear the government’s agenda for Yoga Day.
The fear that yoga might be used to impose a Hindu nationalist agenda is not new to Indian politics. For several years, some members of the Parliament have attempted to make yoga compulsory in public school physical education, angering some Muslims who suggest that teaching yoga in schools is a part of a Hindu nationalist attempt at religious indoctrination. Another public campaign in parts of Europe and North America incites fear of yoga and argues that non-Hindus have been duped into thinking yoga is merely a consumer product when yoga in fact has its origins in India and is essentially Hindu.
Yoga’s most suspicious and fear-inciting Western critics include certain Christians, including Albert Mohler (President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), Pat Robertson (television evangelist and founder of the Christian Coalition of America), the Roman Catholic Church, and even some parents in Encinitas, California who High-profile attempts to define yoga in terms of some national or religious identity are becoming increasingly common. sued their public school district for teaching students yoga. Some Hindus join these Christians in defining yoga as Hindu, most notably the Hindu American Foundation (HAF).
High-profile attempts to define yoga in terms of some national or religious identity are becoming increasingly common despite the lived and historical reality that yoga has never been a static and unified system. Rather, it has varied in its premodern and modern forms, featuring different practices, ideas, and aims, which appeared both within and beyond Hindu traditions and the borders of India, themselves constructed long after the historical emergence of yoga and the majority of its history.
The type of yoga popularized around the world today, modern postural yoga, which includes sequences of postures synchronized with the breath, serves as the practical component of the government’s protocol. Postural yoga cannot be defined as either Hindu or Indian. Scholars doing historical and anthropological research have shown that yoga proponents constructed modern postural yoga in response to early-twentieth-century transnational trends, including military calisthenics, modern medicine, and the physical culture of gymnasts, bodybuilders, and contortionists. Postural yoga’s methods and aims, which include health, stress reduction, beauty, fitness, and overall well-being, all according to modern medical standards and ideals, were specific to the time period and would not have been considered yoga prior to the twentieth century.
Yoga includes a variety of historical as well as living, dynamic traditions, hence the divergences between premodern Buddhists, Jains, and Hindus who practiced yoga, as well as the living yoga giants, Baba Ramdev and Bikram Choudhury, or the American yoga entrepreneurs, tantric-fitness yoga advocate John Friend and the evangelical Christian proponent of “Holy Yoga” Brooke Boon. Any attempt to demarcate what counts as yoga based on a particular national or religious identity is historically and socially misguided.
There are positives about the opportunity to celebrate yoga. After all, many studies have shown modern postural yoga to have benefits for physical and mental health, and practitioners around the world often testify to it bringing about positive transformations in their lives. Nevertheless, any simultaneous attempts to define yoga in ways that bind it within Hindu or Indian identities and accordingly outside of others, are problematic.
There are many reasons then to be suspicious of both Modi and those of his opponents who attempt to define yoga in terms of some assumed national or religious identity. Their opinions regarding Yoga Day share the same, wrong essentializing strategies as other worldwide debates over how to define yoga.
Most high-profile opinions on yoga are largely uninterested in nuanced portraits that reflect the real complexity, dynamism, and diversity of yoga lives. Unfortunately, Modi and his opponents’ recent arguments concerning yoga have served to trap their audiences in inaccurate myths of yoga’s Indian origin or static Hindu essence.
We welcome your comments at ideas@qz.com.
Mobile Uploads - Baratunde R. Thurston
firehosevia Russian Sledges
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/06/charleston-massacre, paywalled
"WE DO not yet know why a gunman entered a church in Charleston, South Carolina on Wednesday and killed nine people at a prayer meeting, but in a sense it does not matter. One searches for reasons in order to assign responsibility and to devise solutions, but in this case no one will accept responsibility, and no solutions will be devised. One might blame radical ideology; given that the gunman, who police suspect is 21-year-old Dylann Roof, is white and the victims black, it seems probable that the motives were rooted in racial hatred. But no modern American party, movement or politician embraces explicit racism. While some exploit more subtle forms of racial resentment, none would admit to any link to a mass killer. A South Carolina branch of the Ku Klux Klan has been on a last-ditch recruitment drive to save itself from extinction, but one expects even the KKK would dissociate itself from violence these days.
The massacre, then (like those in Sandy Hook, Isla Vista, Aurora, and many others), will almost surely be blamed on the actions of a lone madman, who is now in the custody of police. This might, as with the Sandy Hook massacre, lead to support for legislation to make the public mental-health system more proactive (and more coercive). But that legislation is controversial among mental-health practitioners, and has been bogged down in Congress. In any case, while better mental health is a good thing in itself, it is unlikely to have a reliable impact in finding and stopping the small number of people who commit mass killings. The gunman's access to firearms was obviously a prerequisite for the killings. But it has become clear since Sandy Hook that meaningful gun control is politically impossible in America. While certain forms of restrictions on gun ownership are popular, the power of lobbying organisations such as the National Rifle Association and the lock-step opposition of Republicans in Congress have blocked all moves towards legislation.
This political dynamic helps explain why the rise in mass killings in America has not led to any changes in policy. Such killings have become increasingly common, even as the overall number of gun-related homicides has declined. Before yesterday, there had been 279 killings involving four or more victims since 2006, according to an excellent database compiled by USA Today. About five out of six such killings target family members, or involve the commission of another crime such as a burglary. The mass killing in Charleston appears to belong to the sub-category of "public killings": those, like the Sandy Hook massacre, in which the killer had no intimate personal relationship with the victims. In fact, 2015 has not been a particularly bad year for public killings: until yesterday there had been just one, in San Francisco, and police believe it was gang-related. (The biker brawl in Waco, Texas, which left nine people dead, is not classified as a public killing because the victims appeared to have known each other.)
The massacre in Charleston will certainly add to America's growing racial tensions. After a series of killings at the hands of white police officers and citizens in the past few years, African-Americans increasingly feel they are the victims of structural racist violence. One of the most egregious slayings took place in nearby North Charleston in April, when a police officer shot a fleeing African-American man eight times after pulling him over for a broken tail light. (The officer has been indicted for murder.) White Americans often refuse to accept that such violence is rooted in widespread racism; for African-Americans, the connection is obvious. Still, while racist killings by officers could be addressed by changes in jurisprudence or policing practices, it is harder to imagine how to tackle mass murder.
This is not to say that Wednesday's massacre in Charleston has had no political consequences at all. There has been one: Jeb Bush, the Republican presidential candidate, cancelled a rally in the city that had been planned for Thursday. It is interesting to contemplate how many victims a killing must claim before politicians feel they need to cancel a rally in the area, and what types of victims merit cancellation. Would Mr Bush have cancelled his rally after a gang-related killing? What about a terrorist attack? (For that matter, why are political murders such as the Boston Marathon bombing immediately labelled "terrorism", while the apparently political mass murder in Charleston is not?) Will mass killings someday be unremarkable enough in America that politicians feel comfortable ignoring them entirely?
The regularity of mass killings breeds familiarity. The rhythms of grief and outrage that accompany them become—for those not directly affected by tragedy—ritualised and then blend into the background noise. That normalisation makes it ever less likely that America's political system will groan into action to take steps to reduce their frequency or deadliness. Those who live in America, or visit it, might do best to regard them the way one regards air pollution in China: an endemic local health hazard which, for deep-rooted cultural, social, economic and political reasons, the country is incapable of addressing. This may, however, be a bit unfair. China seems to be making progress on pollution."
theverge: A new indie Xbox One game called Cuphead is an insane...
firehosevia Toaster Strudel
A new indie Xbox One game called Cuphead is an insane combination of classic Disney-era handrawn animation, fast-paced arcade game, and original jazz soundtracks.
The Four Lies You’re Going to Hear About the Charleston Massacre — Black Lives Matter — Medium
firehosevia Russian Sledges
steampunktendencies: The revival of Worth (Vogue Magazine)
firehosevia Toaster Strudel
some Nanami's closet shit going on here
www.steampunktendencies.com
www.steampunktendencies.com
www.steampunktendencies.com
www.steampunktendencies.com
www.steampunktendencies.com
www.steampunktendencies.com
www.steampunktendencies.com
The revival of Worth (Vogue Magazine)
gifak-net: video: Sugar Glider Practices Flying in Front of...
firehosevia Nathan Fhtagn
AEP : People don’t like it when economists tell them to have more sex, economists find
firehosevia Albener Pessoa
People who have a lot of sex tend to be happy.
Obvious? Perhaps. But here’s what we don’t know: Does more sex make people happier? Or do happy people just do it more?
A gaggle of economists and statisticians lead by Carnegie Mellon University’s George Lowenstein, a well-known behavioral economist, have done their best best to find out.
Their study, published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, finds that more sex doesn’t always make people happier—especially if the increase is the result of taking part in an economics experiment.
Using local newspapers, advertisements and flyers, the researchers recruited 64 married couples between the ages of 35 and 65, who met certain baseline health and sexual activity criteria. They were randomly separated into a control group and a group that would be asked to change behavior, known as the treatment group. Over the next three months, couples in the treatment group were asked to double the amount of sex they had, while completing daily surveys about their mood (happy? sad? cheerful? tense?) and updates about sexual activity and their attitude toward it.
The upshot? Participants who were asked to have more sex reported lower mood than the control group. The researchers dug into the survey responses among those who were urged to double their sexual activity. They found that participants’ responses suggested significant shifts in energy and excitement, or lack thereof. (Simply put, participants were tired.)
So is more sex now a bad thing? Probably not. The findings seem to indicate that “the instruction to have more sex leads to a decline in wanting for sex and in enjoyment of sex.”
“One possibility might have been that people are unhappy because we are driving them to have more sex than their ideal, than the amount they would have had naturally on their own,” says Loewenstein, but he cautions that it’s important to keep the finding in perspective. “I don’t think it generalizes to the point that it’s bad for couples to have more sex,” he adds.
At any rate, at least we know conclusively whether participation in behavioral economics studies is the best way for married couples to spice things up. The answer is no.
CERN: The early years
firehosevia ThePrettiestOne
