Life, medicine and stuff

Thought of some books I read as a youngster (ie under 18) that had a big influence on me. Bruce Lee biography.  Must have been Larry's – didn't really know who he was, so not sure why I read it, but fantastic to find out about his incredible skills (the one inch punch that was…

As in the book by Herman Hesse.  One of the things that led me to Buddhism.  Was it Duska who said it was for teenagers?    Siddharta ("one who has achieved his aim'') is one of the names given to the Buddha.  The Buddha lived in the 4th century BC, this particular name was given…

  The IMF was one of those targets of student campaigning revulsion.  Sunday Herald reports that the IMF is increasingly sidelined, even by its own members!  Malaysia ignored IMF policy and recovered from Asian crisis of 90s more quickly than its neighbours.  Argentina defied in 2001 – cleared IMF debts in 2006 and has had…

Marissa

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My love affair with Buddhism continues.   There are 2 kinds of mindfulness – both relate to the present moment, but whereas basic mindfulness is about where you are, and what is around you, there is also a mindfulness of the future.  This is to do with how decisions and action have an intention, a…

"Brown eyes are dominant".  Yeees, but…  There are at least 3 genes involved in eye colour, and the main 2 have 2 different alleles, so it all gets a bit complicated.  As a general rule though, blue is always recessive, and brown is always dominant.  Green is dominant over blue, but not over brown.  Got that?

Edmund Burke (18th Century) – "Guilt was never a rational thing, it distorts all faculties of the human mind, it perverts them.  It leaves a man no longer in the free use of his reason.  It puts him in confusion."   Shame culture vs guilt culture: your aversion to being seen as having done wrong,…

An old, medieval legend.  In its original version, never finished, so others added and expanded it to give a number of different versions.  I first came across it as the Terry Gilliam film, with Robin Williams.  And now I realise Amfortas, a character in the opera Parsifal by Wagner that I saw years ago, is…