Pattern Recognition
At the end of every yoga class is a part called "Savasana," which means "corpse pose." It's basically like a cool-down: you lie very still on your back, relaxing and just breathing; mentally you're supposed to stay alert (I've a heard a few people start snoring) but not think about anything, just letting go of any thoughts that come. Sometimes the instructor will lead the class in a "guided awareness" thing, where you focus your awareness on different parts of your body, or do imaging exercises (ie "think of yourself walking down a beach").
Anyway, in Saturday's morning class the instructor did a guided awareness in Savasana, and had us imagine being on a beach (among other things), but all that would come for me was the beach in William Gibson's Neuromancer, the virtual-reality construct of an artificial intelligence. For some reason this again reminded me of KIDDofSpeed, this time her stuff about the diggings near Kiev, probably because of parallels with Gibson's more recent Pattern Recognition.
Anyway, that's what's on my mind as I eat lunch today. Maybe tomorrow I'll talk about Boltzmann Brains, "quantum cognition" and David Mitchell's Ghostwritten.
5 comments:
Or maybe you'll post something that doesn't go flying over my head. Bwaaaaaaahahahahaha. Sorry, Don. Couldn't resist. My brain isn't in the same league as yours.
Hey, I almost forgot to tell you. We didn't get the treadmill after all. We got a Diamondback ellipitical......better workout and not as boring. I am SO out of shape it's pathetic. In less than 15 minutes' time, the machine is screaming that my heart rate has reached 90%. I do finish my 15 minutes though and hope I'll accept that slower is better and not to expect overnight miracles. I just hope I don't croak on the elliptical in the process. ;-)
Word to the wise, Toni: if you have a heart rate monitor, go by what that tells you, rather then the speedometer or pedometer (or whatever elliptical trainers have for speed). Also, if you're using "max heart rate equals 220 minus your age," be aware that this isn't very accurate, though it's usually pretty safe & conservative.
You will get the best results, most quickly, by doing a 10 minute warmup (very easy, 30-40% max HR), 20 minutes at 70% max HR (just barely hard enough to make talking while exercising difficult), and then a 10 minute cooldown like the warmup. Do that four times a week and you'll be surprised how quickly you come up to speed. Working harder will actually slow down your progress, so don't overdo it.
Meantime, did you click on the links to those Kiev diggings? Crazy stuff...
I did click on the Kiev pix. She made amazing discoveries.....well, except for the human remains. I can just imagine the emotions that were stirred up in her. I can't get over the great condition some of them are in. Loved the photo of her family. Wish she had found the mate to that earring.
Yeah, it's a different world that's for sure, way bigger and more recent than Civil War battlfields I've visited. Very interesting girl. That whole scene (diggings) is like one in Pattern Recognition, which was part funeral, part street party & drunken brawl, part archeological expedition, and it went on for months -- they dug up an intact German fighter plane at one point.
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