Tom Perrota Quote

[American culture] idealizes youth and equates growing older not with achieving wisdom, but with the gradual loss of all the things we value—freedom, energy, beauty, coolness...

Becoming an adult means choosing—trading in possibility for reality, and accepting the consequences.

Scavenging

We had a slow night at the Berkeley Free Clinic on Friday night -- a few clients cancelled, so only one male STD screen during the first shift and a routine strep test for the second shift. After the STD screen, the medics let us off the hook early, at around 8:30 pm. My coworker Miriam asked if I wanted to go scavenging with her.

"Definitely," I said.

We headed into the night with our hopes high. We figured we would find a lot of junk on the curb -- some of it possibly useful -- since many UC students had just moved out.

We biked around for a while, eagerly circling South Berkeley for any clothing, furniture, or knick knacks left out on the street.

At first, we were both a little leery of diving into the dumpsters. Then, we ran into a respectable older couple -- a man and woman in their 40s-50s -- eagerly sorting through a huge dumpster. The man, sporting an elegant white beard, was on top of a pile of junk, comfortably sorting through the garbage, just as if he was rummaging in the closet at home looking for his slippers.

That gave us all the confidence we needed. Soon, we were on top of the heap, looking for anything of use.

After a half hour, we had been through three dumpsters. Miriam found a cute crochet sweater, a small juicer, a fancy cookie jar, and a microwave she was possibly coming back for (with a car). I found a polyester Adidas jacket, two brand new MCAT study books, and a handful of highlighters. Everything was in mint condition. Score.

Miriam told me that the mecca of dumpsters in Emeryville. Apparently, an artisanal bakery dumps their day-old bread in a clean, bread-only dumpster. And, a hiking and backpacking store tosses unsold gear in their dumpster. I can't wait to check it out.

Why scavenge? Find out for yourself, or read Anneli Rufus' Scavenger Manifesto.

Raymond Chandler Quote

"There's a peculiar thing about money," he went on. "In large quantities it tends to have a life of its own, even a conscience of its own. The power of money becomes very difficult to control. Man has always been a venal animal. The growth of populations, the huge costs of wars, the incessant pressure of confiscatory taxation--all these things make him more and more venal. The average man is tired and scared, and a tired, scared man can't afford ideals. He has to buy food for his family. In our time we have seen a shocking decline in both public and private morals. You can't expect quality from people whose lives are a subjection to a lack of quality. You can't have quality with mass production. You don't want it because it lasts too long. So you substitute styling, which is a commercial swindle intended to produce artificial obsolescence. Mass production couldn't sell its goods next year unless it made what it sold this year look unfashionable a year from now. We have the whitest kitchens and the most shining bathrooms in the world. But in the lovely white kitchen the average American housewife can't produce a meal fit to eat, and the lovely shining bathroom is mostly a receptacle for deodorants, laxatives, sleeping pills, and the products of that confidence racket called the cosmetic industry. We make the finest packages in the world, Mr. Marlow. The stuff inside is mostly junk."

from The Big Sleep.

Fear is Contagious

Scientists at Stony Brook University in New York have the first preliminary evidence that suggest people unconsciously detect fear.

The experiment scanned the brains of volunteers breathing the secretions of people in a state of fear and compared those to the brains of volunteers breathing the secretions of people in a state of calm.

Absorbent pads were used to collect the sweat from 20 first-time skydivers. For comparison, sweat was also collected from the same skydivers when they ran on a treadmill. The sweat was then nebulized,and volunteers unknowingly breathed the secretions while hooked up to a brain scanner.

The brain scans revealed that the volunteers' amygdala and hypothalamus -- brain regions associated with fear -- were more active in people who breathed the "fear" sweat. People, however, were unable to consciously distinguish the two types of sweat.

Dr. Liliane Mujica-Parodi said, "We demonstrate here the first direct evidence for a human alarm pheromone ... our findings indicate that there may be a hidden biological component to human social dynamics, in which emotional stress is, quite literally, 'contagious'."

Scientists believe that many animals -- including all mammals -- have this internal alarm system, since it is favorable to detect fear in others for one's own survival.

Read the full article on the Guardian website.

Aesop Quote

No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.

The Story of Stuff

"Apeman" by the Kinks

The Ave Marathon

I ran my first marathon yesterday, along the majestic redwood trees of Humboldt State Park.

It was an ideal location to run my first 26.2 miler -- the 2,000 year-old groves of redwood trees shade the flat course and, I've heard, provide an extra oxygen boost to oxygen-deprived runners as well.

For the first half, I felt great. I paced myself early, staying in a thick pack of casual runners that took time to enjoy the scenery around us.

A quarter into the race, I realized I needed to pick up the pace if I wanted to finish in four hours. I left the comfort of the group and forged ahead.

As the course dragged on, though, my spirits flagged -- by mile 16 my legs were hurting and the few runners around me were bonking. A troubling sign occurred at mile 18, when a dehydrated runner was being loaded into an ambulance, muttering nonsensically.

With five miles left, and my spirits at a low, a deer sprang out of the woods and leapt across the course. Certainly a better omen than yesterday, when Jess and I spotted a pair of turkey vultures near the finish line. I couldn't hold back a loud exclamatory "Wow!" that refocused my effort. I decided to speed up and was amazed when my legs actually responded.

After the last hill, I charged down the last 1000 yards to the finish line, completing the course in 4:01. Not a record-breaker by any calculation, but good enough for me.

Study Tips

* Overlearn - Repetition, repetition, repetition.
* Make it meaningful - Connect what you learn to what you already know.
* Chunk information - Break down info into manageable quantities you can memorize.
* Focus - If you're losing focus, read faster. Speed helps you concentrate.
* Review - Always go back and review what you learned previously.