Risks in Loving Men Who Can’t Commit

Commitment phobic men are not wounded birds waiting to be nursed to health.

Should women spend time, energy, and emotion on a man who may never be a part of their future? All too often women say to themselves or their friends: “Well, he wouldn’t commit in the past, but I’m different.  I have more patience than the other women he dated, and I am more understanding than most women. I can help him.” 

 

If you have heard yourself saying the words “I can help him,” think of yourself as being trapped in the “wounded bird syndrome”  in which your desire to nurse someone back to health is so strong that it clouds your logical thinking.

Before getting too involved with a commitment phobic man consider asking yourself  these 20 Questions to Finding New Love and Marriage.  And then make a conscious effort to understand what is most important to you. 2 Virtues Enhance Falling in Love Forever. Also watch his body language and his actions towards you. If you are jumping through hoops for the commitment phobic man and thinking you can nurse him back to love – think again. Many commitment phobic men are reliving a dysfunctional family role (in fact, some women are in this trap as well.)

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self-compassion consists of three components:

• Self-kindness: Being kind, gentle and understanding with yourself when you’re suffering.
• Common humanity: Realizing that you’re not alone in your struggles. When we’re struggling, we tend to feel especially isolated. We think we’re the only ones to experience loss, make mistakes, feel rejected or fail. But it’s these very struggles that are part of our shared experience as humans.
• Mindfulness: Observing life as it is, without being judgemental or suppressing your thoughts and feelings.

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I know I’ve been in sick relationships, but I don’t know what a healthyrelationship looks like.

In the years I’ve been counseling and coaching, many people say, “I know I’ve been in sick relationships, but I don’t know what a healthyrelationship looks like.”

There are many long and complicated answers to this, but there is also a simple one: healthy relationships make your life larger and happier; unhealthy relationships narrow your life and make you crazy.

Healthy relationships do not include mind games, mixed messages, or control.  There is not a back and forth or continual makeup and breakup, or “I’m sorry, please forgive me” every week or so.

 

In healthy relationships, there is a partnership and a nurturing by both parties of that partnership.  At the same time, each person recognizes the need to have interests and time away from their partner to nurture themselves. They don’t need to have the same interests, but rather the same view of life. Healthy love is about taking care of yourself and taking care of your mate… and those things are in balance to the point where they seldom collide.

What is Real Love?

Healthy people lead to healthy relationships and healthy relationships lead to real love.

Real love does not seek another person to fill up what we are lacking. It takes a complete, whole person to really love and overly needy people cannot do it. Real love is balanced. Both partners love in fairly equal amounts. While the balance may shift back and forth, it is not lopsided. If you love someone who is not loving your back, or not loving you the way you love them, then it’s not real.

When you place expectations on people to fill your empty places, that is not healthy. It’s nice to have a partner, a companion, someone to help you weather life’s storms, but it is not okay to look for someone to complete you or fix your broken places. That is not real love; that is dependence, co-dependence, and unhealthy neediness.

Real love does not play games, cause us to lose sleep, friends, jobs, money, time and value in our lives. Real love is an enlarging and not a narrowing experience. And finally, real love does exist. But it is true that in order to find the right person, you need to be the right person.

To be the right person you have to do your work, examine your failed relationships and, find the patterns. Go to counseling if you have historical issues. Find out why you are attracted to a certain type that is not good for you. And, at the same time, build your life so that you are an independent, interesting, and attractive person.  You will attract other independent, interesting, and attractive people who are capable of good and loving relationships.

As I say over and over again, water seeks its own level. If you are attracting and attracted to unhealthy and dysfunctional, you are unhealthy and dysfunctional. Do your work so that real love andlasting love has a chance to walk in.

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How to Keep Your Balance When There’s No Place to Stand and Nothing to Hold On To

Know you what it is to be a child?… it is 
to believe in belief….
– Francis Thompson, 19th c. British poet

We don’t forget our first ah-ha experience any more than we forget our first kiss. The difference is we have some idea of what to expect from a kiss, but we don’t know what to make of an enlightening incident. The experience lingers in memory as something special, but since we can’t account for it, we’re apt to keep it to o urselves.

Only in my thirties did I realize that an experience I’d had in my teens was the analogue of that first kiss. About six years after discovering that our third grade science book contained mistakes, it struck me that anything could be wrong. There were no infallible truths, no ultimate explanations.

 

In high school we were learning that science theories and models were not to be regarded as absolute truths, but rather taken to be useful descriptions that might someday be replaced with better ones. I accepted this way of holding scientific truth—it didn’t seem to undercut its usefulness. But I still wanted to believe there were absolute, moral truths, not mere assumptions, but unimpeachable, eternal verities. My mother certainly acted as if there were.

 

But one day, alone in my bedroom, I had the premonition that what was true of science applied to beliefs of every sort. I realized that, as in science, political, moral, or personal convictions could be questioned and might need amending or qualifying in certain circumstances. The feeling reminded me of consulting a dictionary and realizing that there are no final definitions, only cross references. I remember exactly where I was standing, and how it felt, when I discovered there was no place to stand, nothing to hold on to. I felt sobered, yet at the same time, strangely liberated. After all, if there were no absolutes, then there might be an escape from what often seemed to me to be a confining socialconformity.With this revelation, my hopes for definitive, immutable solutions to life’s problems dimmed. I shared my experience of unbelief with no one at the time, knowing that I couldn’t explain myself and fearing others’ mockery. I decided that to function in society I would have to pretend to go along with the prevailing consensus—at least until I could come up with something better. For decades afterwards, without understanding why, I was drawn to people and ideas that expanded my premonition of a worldview grounded not on immutable beliefs, but rather on a process of continually improving our best working assumptions.Science Models EvolveIt’s the essence of models that they’re works in progress. While nothing could be more obvious—after all, models are all just figments of our fallible imaginations—the idea that models can change, and should be expected to yield their place of privilege to better ones, has been surprisingly hard to impart.Until relatively recently we seem to have preferred to stick to what we know—or think we know—no matter the consequences. Rather than judge for ourselves, we’ve been ready to defer to existing authority and subscribe to received “wisdom.” Perhaps this is because of a premium put on not “upsetting the apple cart” during a period in human history when an upright apple cart was of more importance to group cohesiveness and survival than the fact that the cart was full of rotten apples.Ironically, our principal heroes, saints and geniuses alike, have typically spilled a lot of apples. Very often they are people who have championed a truth that contradicts the official line.A turning point in the history of human understanding came in the seventeenth century when one such figure, the English physician William Harvey, discovered that the blood circulates through the body. His plea—“I appeal to your own eyes as my witness and judge”—was revolutionary at a time when physicians looked not to their own experience but rather accepted on faith the Greek view that blood was made in the liver and consumed as fuel by the body. The idea that dogma be subordinated to the actual experience of the individual seemed audacious at the time.Another milestone was the shift from the geocentric (or Ptolemaic) model (named after the first-century Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy) to the heliocentric model (or Copernican) model (after the sixteenth-century Polish astronomer Copernicus, who is regarded by many as the father of modern science).Until five centuries ago, it was an article of faith that the sun, the stars, and the planets revolved around the earth, which lay motionless at the center of the universe. When the Italian scientist Galileo embraced the Copernican model, which held that the earth and other planets revolve around the sun, he was contradicting the teaching of the Church. This was considered sacrilegious and, under threat of torture, he was forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest, making further astronomical discoveries and writing books for posterity. In 1992, Pope John Paul II acknowledged that the Roman Catholic Church had erred in condemning Galileo for asserting that the Earth revolves around the Sun.The Galileo affair was really an argument about whether models should be allowed to change without the Church’s consent. Those in positions of authority often deem acceptance of their beliefs, and with that the acceptance of their role as arbiters of beliefs, to be more important than the potential benefits of moving on to a better model. For example, the discovery of seashells on mountaintops and fossil evidence of extinct species undermined theological doctrine that the world and all living things were a mere six thousand years old. Such discoveries posed a serious challenge to the Church’s monopoly on truth.Typically, new models do not render old ones useless, they simply circumscribe their domains of validity, unveiling and accounting for altogether new phenomena that lie beyond the scope of the old models. Thus, relativity and quantum theory do not render Newton’s laws of motion obsolete. NASA has no need for the refinements of quantum or relativistic mechanics in calculating the flight paths of space vehicles. The accuracy afforded by Newton’s laws suffices for its purposes.Some think that truths that aren’t absolute and immutable disqualify themselves as truths. But just because models change doesn’t mean that anything goes. At any given time, what “goes” is precisely the most accurate model we’ve got. One simply has to be alert to the fact that our current model may be superseded by an even better one tomorrow. It’s precisely this built-in skepticism that gives science its power.Most scientists are excited when they find a persistent discrepancy between their latest model and empirical data. They know that such deviations signal the existence of hitherto unknown realms in which new phenomena may be discovered. The presumption that nature models are infallible has been replaced with the humbling expectation that their common destiny is to be replaced by more comprehensive and accurate ones.Toward the end of the nineteenth century, many physicists believed they’d learned all there was to know about the workings of the universe. The consensus was that between Newton’s dynamics and Maxwell’s electromagnetism we had everything covered. Prominent scientists solemnly announced the end of physics.There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.– Lord Kelvin (1900)

Then a few tiny discrepancies between theory and experiment were noted and as scientists explored them, they came upon the previously hidden realm of atomic and relativistic physics, and with it technologies that have put their stamp on the twentieth century.

Albert Einstein believed that the final resting place of every theory is as a special case of a broader one. Indeed, he spent the last decades of his life searching for a unified theory that would have transcended the discoveries he made as a young man. The quest for such a grand unifying theory goes on.

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Being and Flowing is a good place to begin Healing Your Thoughts.

 

The first part of the Being and Flowing Sequence is a basic relaxation session where some (or several) of the techniques of guided imagery or meditation can be used. In fact, for this type of relaxation, you can use new techniques or techniques that are familiar to you and that have worked for you in the past. If you do the sequence regularly, you can switch between techniques if you like.

One caveat: We find that general medical/therapy techniques, specifically those that are not associated with a particular spiritual path, work best for the Being and Flowing meditation in this context. (We link to some general relaxation techniques from the University of Maryland Medical Center, below). 

Being and Flowing First Step: Basic Relaxation Session

One: Position

If you are outdoors, find a quiet, safe place in a garden, park, beach or woods. Remember, safety comes first. If you are indoors, find a place where you won’t be disturbed. Sit on a floor cushion or in a chair with your feet on the floor, or lie down in a comfortable position. Whatever position you choose, try to remember, you might choose not to move or shift while being and flowing, so make sure it’s really comfortable.

Two: Watch Your Thoughts

Once you are comfortable, the first thing to keep in mind: Don’t worry about your thoughts. Allow them to come and go as they wish. Give them their freedom to come and go as they like. Don’t try to control them. Just observe them. 

Three: Watch Your Breath

Don’t try to control your breathing. Just observe your breath. If you are familiar with breathing techniques and want to try them, you could, but to forge a new path it’s sometimes good to let go and experience non-familiar meditative pathways.

Four: No Goal

If you feel stressed or anxious, remember: there is no goal here. Just passively watch where your thoughts and breath take you. If after a few tries anxiety (or boredom, which can be a symptom of anxiety during meditation) feels overpowering, take a break.

Five: Far Away

At some point, your thoughts may seem to “melt away”. They may feel far away; you know they’re there, but they don’t seem to touch you, or you don’t really touch them. There is a gulf between you and your thoughts, including your less-than-helpful ones. When they are so far away, their ability to control you is greatly diminished.

Help!

If you need help we recommend you try music. We really like (and recommend) Dr. Harry Henshaw’s relaxation music. (Last year, we interviewed him, here.)

Dr. Henshaw’s audio tracks of free-floating music are really de-stressing. We can best describe them as providing a musical pathway on which your thoughts can flow. His music doesn’t restrain or confine your thoughts as much as gently supports them. We really liked the ones on these pages; so far, we’ve sampled the uplifting music of Clarity, the gentle vibrato of Cosmic Reflection, the sweet tones of Equilibrium and the progressions of Inner Peace.*

If you want more concrete help the techniques of progressive relaxation (and toe tensing) can be very helpful. The University of Maryland Medical Center has clearly outlined them. They recommend the techniques for sleep disorders, but they are also helpful for tension and anxiety. One quibble: they don’t mention that slightly tensing each area of the body (not just the toes) before you relax that part, can be even a more powerful path to relaxation.

We’ve made our own relaxation recordings at home. We record our soft, slow voices giving a step-by-step progressive relaxation session. You might enjoy making your own recordings, too.

Being and Flowing Second Step: Journal

If you are in therapy, or even if you’re not, it’s a good idea to do a Being and Flowing journal. Some people like to share this with their therapist, others don’t. It’s up to you.

You might consider doing an audio or video recording if you don’t like to write. Writing or otherwise recording your general experience with your relaxation session, is a good starting point. Then, if you like, continue to write or otherwise comment on your experience of your thinking process. What were your thoughts? Were you able to let them drift by? Did any thoughts “stick” more than others? Did new thoughts, thoughts you never “thought” before, pop up?

Also, you might explore the self that observed the thoughts. And so on. If you don’t like to write and don’t want to do an audio or video recording, you can try illustrating your experience by drawing, painting, collage (found objects, fabric, and so on), photography, etc.

Once you have a sense of Being and Flowing, you’ll might find yourself being able to step back, even in a non-relaxing session, from your thoughts that are not beneficial. You might find it easier to dispassionately examine your thoughts (and beliefs, which are a type of thought often mingled with emotion) and see if they are really beneficial to you.

In fact, a very important, even central, part of therapy is examining thoughts and beliefs that hamper or are openly damaging to: your personal growth, relationships, mental health, and physical health. Therapy, in part, teaches you how to “rethink” things, even changing your most closely held beliefs, if they don’t serve your growth. Healing your thoughts is central to healing your life.

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How do you treat yourself

How do you treat yourself?     How should you treat yourself? What should you think about yourself? How should you feel about yourself? Well..... how do you treat your best friend? What do you think about them? How do you feel about them? Now take that and multiply it by 10, multiply it by 100. Imagine how you would feel about somebody you were completely in love with, that you loved more than life itself, but it was an unconditional, open, free, healthy love, and not a needy, posessive, jealous, conditional love. Your eyes are wide open and you see all their faults and yet you love them despite their faults, perhaps because of them. Now perhaps you are getting close to how you should feel about yourself..........Simon Meadowcroft

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Animal-human hybrid stickers invading Parisian streets

While marketing and mainstream communications campaigns have derived branding inspiration in the comic-like cartoon style of street art, and the values attached to its culture—freedom, community, transgression—the paradox still exists to see it framed and sold through traditional art channels.

We caught up with street artist Rafael Suriani at his recent show, "Collages Urbains", at Cabinet d'amateur gallery in Paris, where he told us more about street art and his relationship with the medium.

Suriani's mark features animals, surviving and thriving in the streets for its powerful and highly recognizable aesthetic. In his half-human-half-animal figures, the animal faces act as liberating masks, allowing the artist to express social criticism in an elegant way. The vibrant, seemingly playful creatures refrain from getting too serious and maintain a suggestive tone that avoids the obvious.

 

The stickers are the result of a double-binding process that first assembles man and animal, then adheres the resulting figure to the wall. In the past, Suriani has drawn from his Latin-American heritage, playing with shamanic mythology figures such as toucan or jaguar. In his recent series, on the other hand, he is more interested in urban domestic animals such as cats and dogs—according to the artist, the convention that they tend to resemble their owners offers a metaphoric way to talk about us people. Recently Suriani made a series of French "Bulldogs" as a special dedication on London walls, using this breed to cartoon and make fun of some French characteristics. Each dog expresses a different state of mind—humor, spirituality, criticism or beauty.

 

Suriani uses the rare technique of hand-painting every poster he sticks on the streets. Making each sticker is the result of a process involving selecting photos from the Internet, cutting them in Photoshop, then screening and painting before cutting the final product. Such repetition lies at the heart of street art practice, which is often based on plastering as many spots as possible, invasion-style.

When considering the ephemeral fate of the piece of work destined for degradation of the elements, police destruction or theft from passers-by, the time and effort for such little reward seems remarkable. Suriani explains, however, that the fleeting nature of his work is freeing and allows him to be audacious with both subject and technique. To him, because there is no pressure or constraint, that achievement is rarely a failure.

In the end, the piece of art is not the only sticker by itself, it is the sticker in its context, seen as a whole on the wall with the daylight shining on it, the motorbikes parked against it or the branch of a tree creeping across. Rarely is the work's time spent on the wall its only life, after all, with the rise of dedicated photographers immortalizing the scenes for the Internet.

Suriani claims his intention to step into the city's landscape by bringing much-needed beauty comes with a positive message. Rather than being aggressive or controversial, Suriani takes pleasure in having people on the street enjoy his figures. His work is bound to the city—physically, geographically and socially—compelling the public to refresh their view of their surroundings and drawing their eyes to the places that typically go unnoticed. As an architect, Suriani has found a way to unveil the city and change people's perception of the scenes they see everyday without truly seeing them. The choice of venue is very important, based on aesthetic consideration with attention to the context and surroundings like the location.

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EURO 2012 POSTERS BY DAVID WATSON

Euro 2012 recently began and, for those of you who don’t know, it’s the European football championship. European football is what we Americans call soccer, and it has slowly gained steam over the years, although still not as popular as American football…  Whether you’re into the championship or not (or even sports in general), you’ll probably love these simple, modern posters David Watson ofTrebleseven designed for it.

 

Each poster represents a particular country that’s playing, and the colors of their flag are incorporated into one of the various circular designs. I love the typographic twist these posters have and how they don’t have blatant sports references in them.

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AWARE2 gigapixel camera

'AWARE2' gigapixel camera by duke university
above: 3 increasing zoom levels of footage taken by the camera

 
engineers at duke university have developed a camera able to take photos with up to one billion pixels of resolution. 
the 'AWARE2' gigapixel camera uses 98 sensors each at 14 megapixels, capable of detecting detail from as far as 1 kilometer away.
the current model weighs in at approximately 100 pounds, and only shoots in black and white.

explore more of the super high-resolution photos on duke's site with these zoomable examples of a lake scene, building atrium and riverside town.

 

original image shot at .96 gigapixels; explore the full zoomable image here



the 'AWARE2' camera


camera processor render



making of 'AWARE2' gigapixel camera 

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Smokers could one day be immunised against nicotine so they gain no pleasure from the habit, according to researchers in the US.

They have devised a vaccine that floods the body with an antibody to assault nicotine entering the body.

A study in mice, published in Science Translational Medicine, showed levels of the chemical in the brain were reduced by 85% after vaccination.

Years of research are still needed before it could be tested on people.

However, lead researcher Prof Ronald Crystal is convinced there will be benefits.

"As far as we can see, the best way to treat chronic nicotine addiction from smoking is to have these Pacman-like antibodies on patrol, clearing the blood as needed before nicotine can have any biological effect."

New approach

Other "smoking vaccines" have been developed that train the immune system to produce antibodies that bind to nicotine - it is the same method used to vaccinate against diseases. The challenge has been to produce enough antibodies to stop the drug entering the brain and delivering its pleasurable hit.

Scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College have used a completely different approach, a gene-therapy vaccine, which they say is more promising.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

If they start smoking again, they will receive no pleasure from it due to the nicotine vaccine, and that can help them kick the habit”

Prof Ronald CrystalWeill Cornell Medical College

A genetically modified virus containing the instructions for making nicotine antibodies is used to infect the liver. This turns the organ into a factory producing the antibodies.

The research team compared the amount of nicotine in the brains of normal mice with those that had been immunised. After being injected with nicotine, the vaccinated mice had nicotine levels 85% lower.

It is not known if this could be repeated in humans or if this level of reduction would be enough to help people quit.

Prof Crystal said that if such a vaccine could be developed then people "will know if they start smoking again, they will receive no pleasure from it due to the nicotine vaccine, and that can help them kick the habit".

He added: "We are very hopeful that this kind of vaccine strategy can finally help the millions of smokers who have tried to stop, exhausting all the methods on the market today, but find their nicotine addiction to be strong enough to overcome these current approaches."

'Impressive and intriguing'

There are also issues around the safety of gene therapy in humans that will need to be answered.

Professor of genetics at the University of Kent, Darren Griffin, said the findings were "impressive and intriguing with great potential" but cautioned there were still many issues which needed addressing.

He said the main issue "is whether the observed biochemical effects in lab mice genuinely translate to a reduced addiction in humans given that such addictions can be both physical and psychological".

Dr Simon Waddington, from University College London, said: "The technology underpinning gene therapy is improving all the time and it is encouraging to see these preliminary results that indicate it could be used to address nicotine addiction, which is damaging to the nation's health and a drain on the health service economy."

If such a vaccine was developed it could also raise ethical questions about vaccinating people, possibly in childhood, before they even started smoking.

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Smokers could one day be immunised against nicotine so they gain no pleasure from the habit, according to researchers in the US.

They have devised a vaccine that floods the body with an antibody to assault nicotine entering the body.

A study in mice, published in Science Translational Medicine, showed levels of the chemical in the brain were reduced by 85% after vaccination.

Years of research are still needed before it could be tested on people.

However, lead researcher Prof Ronald Crystal is convinced there will be benefits.

"As far as we can see, the best way to treat chronic nicotine addiction from smoking is to have these Pacman-like antibodies on patrol, clearing the blood as needed before nicotine can have any biological effect."

New approach

Other "smoking vaccines" have been developed that train the immune system to produce antibodies that bind to nicotine - it is the same method used to vaccinate against diseases. The challenge has been to produce enough antibodies to stop the drug entering the brain and delivering its pleasurable hit.

Scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College have used a completely different approach, a gene-therapy vaccine, which they say is more promising.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

If they start smoking again, they will receive no pleasure from it due to the nicotine vaccine, and that can help them kick the habit”

Prof Ronald CrystalWeill Cornell Medical College

A genetically modified virus containing the instructions for making nicotine antibodies is used to infect the liver. This turns the organ into a factory producing the antibodies.

The research team compared the amount of nicotine in the brains of normal mice with those that had been immunised. After being injected with nicotine, the vaccinated mice had nicotine levels 85% lower.

It is not known if this could be repeated in humans or if this level of reduction would be enough to help people quit.

Prof Crystal said that if such a vaccine could be developed then people "will know if they start smoking again, they will receive no pleasure from it due to the nicotine vaccine, and that can help them kick the habit".

He added: "We are very hopeful that this kind of vaccine strategy can finally help the millions of smokers who have tried to stop, exhausting all the methods on the market today, but find their nicotine addiction to be strong enough to overcome these current approaches."

'Impressive and intriguing'

There are also issues around the safety of gene therapy in humans that will need to be answered.

Professor of genetics at the University of Kent, Darren Griffin, said the findings were "impressive and intriguing with great potential" but cautioned there were still many issues which needed addressing.

He said the main issue "is whether the observed biochemical effects in lab mice genuinely translate to a reduced addiction in humans given that such addictions can be both physical and psychological".

Dr Simon Waddington, from University College London, said: "The technology underpinning gene therapy is improving all the time and it is encouraging to see these preliminary results that indicate it could be used to address nicotine addiction, which is damaging to the nation's health and a drain on the health service economy."

If such a vaccine was developed it could also raise ethical questions about vaccinating people, possibly in childhood, before they even started smoking.

Read More

Coke and Pepsi contain tiny traces of alcohol, reveals French research

Coca-Cola and Pepsi contain minute traces of alcohol, scientific research published in France has revealed. The revelation will cause concern among those who chose the carbonated soft drink for religious, health or safety reasons. According to tests carried out by the Paris-based National Institute of Consumption (INC) more than half of leading colas contain the traces of alcohol. Can't beat the real thing: The revelation will cause concern among those who chose the carbonated soft drink for religious, health or safety reasons These include the brand leaders Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola, while it is mainly only cheap supermarket versions of the drink which are alcohol-free. ‘60 Million Consumers’, the French magazine, publishes the results of the tests in its latest issue. They suggest that the alcohol levels are as low as 10mg in every litre, and this works out at around 0.001 per cent alcohol.

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Coke and Pepsi contain tiny traces of alcohol, reveals French research

Coca-Cola and Pepsi contain minute traces of alcohol, scientific research published in France has revealed. The revelation will cause concern among those who chose the carbonated soft drink for religious, health or safety reasons. According to tests carried out by the Paris-based National Institute of Consumption (INC) more than half of leading colas contain the traces of alcohol. Can't beat the real thing: The revelation will cause concern among those who chose the carbonated soft drink for religious, health or safety reasons These include the brand leaders Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola, while it is mainly only cheap supermarket versions of the drink which are alcohol-free. ‘60 Million Consumers’, the French magazine, publishes the results of the tests in its latest issue. They suggest that the alcohol levels are as low as 10mg in every litre, and this works out at around 0.001 per cent alcohol.

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Keith Richards Talks Joint Recordings With Jack White

Mick Jagger, Jack White and Keith Richards on the cover of Rolling Stone

Max Vadukul

Keith Richards and Jack White have been friends for years, but in 2009 they collaborated professionally, spending time together in a recording studio. "I enjoy working with Jack," Richards told Rolling Stone at the time. "We've done a couple of tracks."

In a recent chat with RS, Richards addressed the possibility of the joint recordings being released one day. "I don't know if [Jack] ever considered that it was actually, like, master cuts," Richards now says. "But at the same time if Jack wanted to do it, I'd probably say, 'Yeah.'"

"I know Jack pretty well," adds Richards. "He's a lovely player."

Richards will travel to London for a Stones summit in July, where the band will discuss potential plans to record new material to mark their 50^th anniversary. "We're going to talk about that in July and see," he said. "I mean, I'd love to get some tracks down and see what songs we've got. And that goes along with part of getting the band back together and getting things moving. So I'd love to cut some tracks, yeah."

For years, fans have speculated about whether White will produce the Stones, working the same magic he did with Loretta Lynn and Wanda Jackson. "That's always a possibility," Richards says. "The door is wide open."

White first saw the Stones live when the White Stripes opened for them in 2002. "[I learned] how good they were," White told David Fricke in his 2008 cover story with Richards. "You could see the comfort level between them, in Keith's guitar playing and Ron's slide playing. It's impressive, man, when that confidence is exuded."

White's favorite Stones song? "'Undercover of the Night.' I love the guitar riff. I wanted to break the song down to just the riff and that shaky-maracas beat. But we worked on it for a second and got distracted, I guess."

"You wouldn't have loved the song so much," Richards told White, "if you'd had to do the goddamned video for it."

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Catching a bit of the sun’s light and keeping it in a jar sounds like fantasy

 

Catching a bit of the sun’s light and keeping it in a jar sounds like fantasy, but in fact Sun Jars let you do just that. Meant to mimic the gentle glow of a sunset, sun jars are a sweet little way to brighten up your world.

While it is bright outside, sun jars capture and collect the rays of the sun, storing that energy until the sun ducks below the horizon for the night. For instant gratification, sun jars can be purchased in pink, blue and yellow varieties. But for the brave DIYer, the same effect can be achieved at home on the cheap.

The project can be as simple or as involved as you want it to be, depending on your skills and the available materials. One of thesimplest methods involves tearing apart a solar-powered yard light and re-seating the light inside a frosted kitchen storage jar. Of course, creative types with a bit of mechanical know-how could built a solar cell from the ground up and attach it to a light, then mount it inside a jar in the same way.

However your sun jar comes into existence, grouping several of these little jars together on a patio or porch makes for the perfect decorative lighting. The glow is very soft, almost like the glow of fireflies confined in a jar just long enough to let you admire them.

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bastiaan kok has developed a 'porsche bicycle' which is influenced by the famous 911 series car.

'porsche bicycle' by bastiaan kok
all images courtesy of bastiaan kok
low placed handlebar and integrated bicycle helmet storage


netherland-based bastiaan kok has developed a 'porsche bicycle' which is influenced by the famous 911 series car. 
the bodywork resembles the classic lines of the sport to the integrated headlight, through to the slightly curved top tube, 
to the impressive rear wheel fender ending in the taillight. a low placed handle bar and integrated bicycle helmet are reminiscent of old race motorbikes.

the bicycle tube frame is replaced by a single piece of lightweight alloy for bodywork. the front fork is manufactured using investment casting 
with a master produced by rapid prototyping. with this method the complicated shape is created out of one piece with surface finishing and
integrated ultra thin ribs with all the necessary bearing shells. the five spoke carbon wheel holds 60-622 schwalbe big apple drive tires with 
an internal shaft drive propeller and disc brakes.



porsche 911 characteristics in detail



sketches



single piece bodywork with integrated bearing shells



final design sketches

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The Scam Wall Street Learned From the Mafia

Someday, it will go down in history as the first trial of the modern American mafia. Of course, you won't hear the recent financial corruption case, United States of America v. Carollo, Goldberg and Grimm, called anything like that. If you heard about it at all, you're probably either in the municipal bond business or married to an antitrust lawyer. Even then, all you probably heard was that a threesome of bit players on Wall Street got convicted of obscure antitrust violations in one of the most inscrutable, jargon-packed legal snoozefests since the government's massive case against Microsoft in the Nineties – not exactly the thrilling courtroom drama offered by the famed trials of old-school mobsters like Al Capone or Anthony "Tony Ducks" Corallo. But this just-completed trial in downtown New York against three faceless financial executives really was historic. Over 10 years in the making, the case allowed federal prosecutors to make public for the first time the astonishing inner workings of the reigning American crime syndicate, which now operates not out of Little Italy and Las Vegas, but out of Wall Street. The defendants in the case – Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg and Peter Grimm – worked for GE Capital, the finance arm of General Electric. Along with virtually every major bank and finance company on Wall Street – not just GE, but J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, UBS, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Wachovia and more – these three Wall Street wiseguys spent the past decade taking part in a breathtakingly broad scheme to skim billions of dollars from the coffers of cities and small towns across America. The banks achieved this gigantic rip-off by secretly colluding to rig the public bids on municipal bonds, a business worth $3.7 trillion. By conspiring to lower the interest rates that towns earn on these investments, the banks systematically stole from schools, hospitals, libraries and nursing homes – from "virtually every state, district and territory in the United States," according to one settlement. And they did it so cleverly that the victims never even knew they were being ­cheated. No thumbs were broken, and nobody ended up in a landfill in New Jersey, but money disappeared, lots and lots of it, and its manner of disappearance had a familiar name: organized crime. In fact, stripped of all the camouflaging financial verbiage, the crimes the defendants and their co-conspirators committed were virtually indistinguishable from the kind of thuggery practiced for decades by the Mafia, which has long made manipulation of public bids for things like garbage collection and construction contracts a cornerstone of its business. What's more, in the manner of old mob trials, Wall Street's secret machinations were revealed during the Carollo trial through crackling wiretap recordings and the lurid testimony of cooperating witnesses, who came into court with bowed heads, pointing fingers at their accomplices. The new-age gangsters even invented an elaborate code to hide their crimes. Like Elizabethan highway robbers who spoke in thieves' cant, or Italian mobsters who talked about "getting a button man to clip the capo," on tape after tape these Wall Street crooks coughed up phrases like "pull a nickel out" or "get to the right level" or "you're hanging out there" – all code words used to manipulate the interest rates on municipal bonds. The only thing that made this trial different from a typical mob trial was the scale of the crime. USA v. Carollo involved classic cartel activity: not just one corrupt bank, but many, all acting in careful concert against the public interest. In the years since the economic crash of 2008, we've seen numerous hints that such orchestrated corruption exists. The collapses of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, for instance, both pointed to coordi­nated attacks by powerful banks and hedge funds determined to speed the demise of those firms. In the bankruptcy of Jefferson County, Alabama, we learned that Goldman Sachs accepted a $3 million bribe from J.P. Morgan Chase to permit Chase to serve as the sole provider of toxic swap deals to the rubes running metropolitan Birmingham – "an open-and-shut case of anti-competitive behavior," as one former regulator described it. More recently, a major international investigation has been launched into the manipulation of Libor, the interbank lending index that is used to calculate global interest rates for products worth more than $3 trillion a year. If and when that case is presented to the public at trial – there are several major civil suits in the works here in the States – we may yet find out that the world's most powerful banks have, for years, been fixing the prices of almost every adjustable-rate vehicle on earth, from mortgages and credit cards to interest-rate swaps and even currencies. But USA v. Carollo marks the first time we actually got incontrovertible evidence that Wall Street has moved into this cartel-type brand of criminality. It also offered a disgusting glimpse into the enabling and grossly cynical role played by politicians, who took Super Bowl tickets and bribe-stuffed envelopes to look the other way while gangsters raided the public kitty. And though the punishments that were ultimately handed down in the trial – minor convictions of three bit players – felt deeply unsatisfying, it was still a watershed moment in the ongoing story of America's gradual awakening to the realities of financial corruption. In a post-crash era where Wall Street trials almost never make it into court, and even the harshest settlements end with the evidence buried by the government and the offending banks permitted to escape with no admission of wrongdoing, this case finally dragged the whole ugly truth of American finance out into the open – and it was a hell of a show. 1. THE SCAM This was no trial scene from popular lore, no Inherit the Wind or State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson. No gallery packed with rapt spectators, no ceiling fans set whirring to beat back the tension and the heat, no defense counsel's resting a sympathetic hand on the defendant's shoulder as opening statements commence. No, the setting for USA v. Carollo reflected the bizarre alternate universe that exists on Wall Street. Like so many court cases involving big banks, the proceeding looked more like a roomful of expensive lawyers negotiating a major corporate merger than a public search for justice. The trial began on April 16th in a federal court in Lower Manhattan. The courtroom, an aerielike setting 23 stories up, offered a panoramic view of the city and the East River. Though the gallery was usually full throughout the three-plus weeks of testimony, the spectators were not average citizens come to witness how they had been robbed blind by America's biggest banks. Instead, there were row after row of suits – other lawyers eager to observe a long-awaited case, one that could influence the outcome in a handful of civil suits pending across the country. In fact, the defendants themselves, whom the trial would reveal as easily replaceable cogs in a much larger machine of corruption, were barely visible from the gallery, obscured by the great chattering congress of prosecution and defense attorneys. Only the presence of the mostly nonwhite and elderly jury, which resembled the front pew of a Harlem church, served as a reminder that the case had any connection to the real world. Even reporters from most of the major news outlets didn't bother to attend. The judge in the trial, the right honorable and amusingly cantankerous Harold Baer, acknowledged that the case was not likely to set the public's pulse racing. "It is unlikely, I think, that this will generate a lot of media publicity," Baer sighed to the jury in his preliminary instructions.

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UK Jobseekers who reject help for alcohol and drug addiction face benefits cut

Unemployed people suspected of suffering from alcoholism or drug addiction will have their benefits cut if they refuse treatment for their condition, the work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, will signal on Wednesday. In a sign of the government's new benefits regime, which lies at the heart of Duncan Smith's cost-cutting welfare changes, staff in Jobcentre Plus offices will be encouraged to cut the jobseeker's allowance of claimants who reject treatment for addiction. The new rules will come into place in October 2013 when the universal credit, which is designed to wrap benefits into one payment, is introduced. A new claimant contract lies at the heart of the universal credit reforms. Claimants will have to sign a contract in which they agree to look for work in exchange for an undertaking from the government to support them while they do so. Government sources said the contract would allow Jobcentre Plus staff to say that a suspected addict is in breach of their commitments if they refuse help for alcoholism or drug addiction. Duncan Smith will give a flavour of the new rules when he addresses an event in parliament organised by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). He will say: "The outdated benefits system fails to get people off drugs and put their lives on track. We have started changing how addicts are supported, but we must go further to actively take on the devastation that drugs and alcohol can cause. "Under universal credit we want to do more to encourage and support claimants into rehabilitation for addiction and starting them on the road to recovery and eventually work. Getting people into work and encouraging independence is our ultimate goal. Universal credit will put people on a journey towards a sustainable recovery so they are better placed to look for work in future and we will be outlining our plans shortly." It is understood that the work and pensions secretary will not make a formal announcement on Wednesday of the powers that will be handed to Jobcentre Plus staff. Duncan Smith wants to use the event to focus on what he regards as the positive work AA does in helping to treat alcoholism. A government source said: "Iain wants to focus on the brilliant work Alcoholics Anonymous does in changing people's lives. He really wants to encourage people who have drink problems to go to AA for treatment. It will transform their lives and will help them into work." The source said Duncan Smith believes it is right to give jobcentre staff powers to cut benefits if an addict refuses treatment because they can detect signs of trouble. The source said: "The universal credit will allow staff in Jobcentre Plus offices to say: this person has been unemployed for some time. The staff know if people are addicted to alcohol. They know the people they are dealing with. "But we want this to be positive and to be about signposting people to superb organisations that can help them. This is about changing their lives. It is very important to support addicts into the workplace." But if claimants refuse they will have their benefits docked. "There will be sanctions," the source said, citing cuts to the jobseeker's allowance as an example. Ministers believe that one indicator Jobcentre Plus staff can use to see whether a claimant is an addict is the amount of times they apply for a crisis loan. "If you are applying for that up to 10 times a year then that is a sign of a chaotic life," one source said. Analysis by the Department of Work and Pensions shows that almost 40,000 people claim incapacity benefit with alcoholism declared as their "primary diagnosis". Of these, 13,500 have been claiming for a decade or more. There are about 160,000 "dependent drinkers" in England who receive one or more of the main benefits. There are 1m violent crimes a year that are related to alcoholism and 1.2m admissions to hospitals a year related to alcoholism. Universal credit is the most important element of Duncan Smith's welfare reforms, developed during his years in opposition through his Centre for Social Justice, which is designed to achieve his central goal of encouraging people into work. It will integrate tax credits and out-of-work benefits into one payment, with the aim of smoothing the transition to work. Labour has given the universal credit a cautious welcome, though it has taken issue with the scale of benefit cuts. Lord Low of Dalston, the vice-president of the Royal National Institute of Blind People who sits as a crossbencher, told peers this year: "Though it has some very sensible and progressive things at its core, in the shape of the universal credit, nevertheless it goes too far to most people's consciences in the way in which it takes vital support away from some of the most needy in our society."

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London buses have been booked to carry a Christian advertising campaign expected to start next week, which asserts the power of therapy to change the sexual orientation of gay people.

Core Issues Trust's advert states: 'Not gay! Post-gay, ex-gay and proud. Get over it!' mimicking the style of Stonewall's: 'Some people are gay. Get over it' advertising campaign which has run recently.

The full length advert, which will appear on five different routes in the capital, is backed by the Core Issues Trust whose leader, Mike Davies, believes "homoerotic behaviour is sinful". His charity funds "reparative therapy" for gay Christians who believe that they have homosexual feelings but want to become straight. The campaign is also backed by Anglican Mainstream, an worldwide orthodox Anglican group whose supporters have equated homosexuality with alcoholism.

The advert will say: "Not gay! Post-gay, ex-gay and proud. Get over it!" Post-gay and ex-gay are terms used by Christians and some psychotherapists and psychiatrists to refer to homosexual people who have undergone spiritual or pastoral therapy and, according to an Anglican Mainstream definition, have "now left a homosexual lifestyle [and experienced] an increased emotional and sexual attraction to the opposite biological gender and possibly a reduction in or loss of same-sex attraction."

The buses are due to roll out on Monday morning on some of the most popular routes. They will be seen for two weeks travelling past St Paul's Cathedral, down Oxford Street, round Trafalgar Square and through Piccadilly Circus as well as across other parts of the capital.

The campaign is an explicit attempt to hit back at gay rights group Stonewall, which ran its own bus advert saying: "Some people are gay. Get over it." The Christian groups have used the same black, red and white colour scheme as Stonewall and accuses it of promoting the "false idea that there is indisputable scientific evidence that people are born gay".

The Rev Lynda Rose, a spokesperson for the UK branch of Anglican Mainstream said because her group adheres to scripture that all fornication outside marriage is prohibited, it believes that homosexuals are "not being fully the people God intended us to be".

It has sparked an angry response from gay rights campaigners.

The former Europe minister and gay ex-vicar, Chris Bryant MP, said the advert was cruel, particularly to teenagers struggling to come to terms with their sexuality, for promoting the idea that you could become "ex-gay".

"The emotional damage that is done to the individuals who try to suppress their sexuality, the women they marry and the children they might have is immeasurable," he said. "Most sane Christians believe that homosexuality is not a lifestyle or a choice but is a fact to be discovered or not. The pretence that homosexuality is something you can be weaned off in some way is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of creation."

Ben Summerskill, the chief executive of Stonewall, said the adverts were clearly homophobic and added: "The only reason some gay people might want to stop being gay is because of the prejudice of the people who are publishing the ad.

"The promotion of this voodoo therapy is hugely irresponsible given the damage that it appears to do to some people."

Attempts to "treat" or alter sexual orientation have been strongly condemned by leading medical organisations. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has warned that "so-called treatments of homosexuality create a setting in which prejudice and discrimination flourish" and concluded in 2010 that "there is no sound evidence that sexual orientation can be changed". The British Medical Association has also attacked "conversion therapy", a related field to reparation therapy, passing a motion asserting that it is "discredited and harmful to those 'treated' ".

Rose said therapies endorsed by Anglican Mainstream and Core Issues were not coercive and stressed that they are appropriate for people who want to change their sexual attractions, for example if they are married and are worried about the impact of a gay lifestyle on their children.

"Reparative therapy works to help men, who want to change their sexual orientation, naturally dissipate their homoerotic feelings and maximise their heterosexual potential," she said.

In a statement, Anglican Mainstream and Core Issues said Stonewall's slogan is "merely another attempt to close down the critical debate about being gay, and marriage 'equality' ". They accused Stonewall of riding roughshod over individuals who chose to "move out of homosexuality".

The statement continued: "Both organisations recognise the rights of individuals to identify as gay, and to live according to their own values. But by the same token, they believe individuals – such as married men and women unhappy with their homosexuality – should be supported in developing their heterosexual potential where this is the appropriate life choice for them … Current scientific research says there is no gay gene and that sexuality is far more fluid than has hitherto been thought."

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Your Vagina Isn't Just Too Big, Too Floppy, and Too Hairy—It's Also Too Brown

Good news, ladies! Society has discovered another new thing that's wrong with you, which means another opportunity for you to make yourself more attractive for your man. Score! Turns out, the color of your vagina is gross and everyone hates it. So bleach that motherfucker. Bleach it right now! In this commercial for an Indian product called Clean and Dry Intimate Wash, a (very light-skinned) couple sits down for what would have been a peaceful cup of morning coffee—if the woman's disgusting brown vagina hadn't ruined everything! The dude can't even bring himself look at her. He can't look at his coffee either, because it only reminds him of his wife's dripping, coffee-brown hole! Fortunately, the quick-thinking woman takes a shower, scrubbing her swarthy snatch with Clean and Dry Intimate Wash ("Freshness + Fairness"). And poof! Her vadge comes out blinding white like a downy baby lamb (and NOT THE GROSS BLACK KIND) and her husband—whose penis, I can only assume, is literally a light saber—is all, "Hey, lady! Cancel them divorce papers and LET'S BONE." Needless to say, certain citizens are troubled by this product—which, in addition to just being fucking insane, brings up painful issues about the hierarchy of skin tone within the Indian community. As if it isn't bad enough that darker-skinned people are encouraged to stay out of the sun and invest in skin-bleaching products like Fair & Lovely, and that white actresses are being imported to play Indian people in Bollywood movies, now everyone has to be insecure about the fact that their vaginas happen to be the color that vaginas are??? Splendid! God, I was just saying the other day that my misogyny didn't have enough racism in it. So what are the pro-vadge-bleaching people thinking? Here's a hilarious explanation from a male ad exec: It is hard to deny that fairness creams often get social commentators and activists all worked up. What they should do is take a deep breath and think again. Lipstick is used to make your lips redder, fairness cream is used to make you fairer-so what's the problem? I don't think any Youngistani today thinks the British Raj/White man is superior to us Brown folk. That's all 1947 thinking! The only reason I can offer for why people like fairness, is this: if you have two beautiful girls, one of them fair and the other dark, you see the fair girl's features more clearly. This is because her complexion reflects more light. I found this amazing difference when I directed Kabir Bedi, who is very fair and had to wear dark makeup for Othello, the Black hero of the play. I found I had to have a special spotlight following Kabir around the stage because otherwise the audience could not see his expressions. See? It makes perfect sense. We just want our vaginas to reflect more light—is that so wrong? I mean, WHAT IF MY CAR BREAKS DOWN AT NIGHT AND I DON'T HAVE A REFLECTIVE ENOUGH VAGINA? Really, the ultimate one-vagina-to-rule-them-all would glow in the dark like one of those deep-sea fishes. I need my vagina to attract more krill so my husband will fuck me again! (My husband is a whale.) Basically the idea is to get as far away as possible from any color that vaginas actually come in. Because that's what's at the heart of this type of thinking—the perfect vagina would be something that's not a vagina at all.

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