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Ashura
Day of Ashura in Nabatiyeh, southern Lebanon.
The day of Ashura is marked by Muslims as a whole, but for Shia Muslims it is a major religious festival. It is a solemn day mourning the martyrdom of Hussein in 680 AD at Karbala in modern-day Iraq. The killing of Hussein was an event that led to the split in Islam into two main sects: Sunnis and Shias. Day of Ashura in Nabatiyeh is made up of mourning rituals and passion plays re-enacting the martyrdom. Shia men and women dressed in black also parade through the streets slapping their chest and chanting. Many Shia men in Nabatiyeh seek to emulate the suffering of Hussein by flagellating themselves with chains or cutting their foreheads until blood streams from their bodies. They also cut foreheads of young boys and babies. Shias consider Hussein (the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed) the third Imam and the rightful successor of Muhammad. Hussein's martyrdom is widely interpreted by Shia as a symbol of the struggle against injustice, tyranny and oppression. Shias believe the Battle of Karbala was between the forces of good and evil. Shias also believe the Battle of Karbala was fought to keep the Muslim religion untainted of any corruptions and they believed the path that Yazid was directing Islam was definitely for his own personal greed. Some Shia leaders and groups discourage the bloodletting, saying it creates a backward and negative image of Shia Muslims. Such leaders encourage people to donate blood. Most Muslims, particularly Sunnis, believe that the Shia practice of matam constitutes 'Bidat' (innovation) and goes against the Quran and Islam. Ashura falls on the 10th of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic lunar calendar.
Nabatiyeh, Lebanon, January 19, 2008.

Scientists say that a successful midday nap depends on two things: timing and (no kidding) caffeine consumption. Experiments performed at Loughborough University in the UK showed that the sleep-deprived need only a cup of coffee and 15 minutes of shut-eye to feel amazingly refreshed.
1. Right before you crash, down a cup of java. The caffeine has to travel through your gastro-intestinal tract, giving you time to nap before it kicks in.
2. Close your eyes and relax. Even if you only doze, you'll get what's known as effective microsleep, or momentary lapses of wakefulness.
3. Limit your nap to 15 minutes. A half hour can lead to sleep inertia, or the spinning down of the brain's prefrontal cortex, which handles functions like judgment. This gray matter can take 30 minutes to reboot.

- Did you ever keep a journal when you were a kid? It's funny, I read one of mine from '83 the other day. And what really surprised me is that I was dealing with life the same way I am now. I was much more hopefull and naive but the core, and the way I was feeling things, is exactly the same. It made me realize I haven't changed much at all.
- I don't think anybody does. People don't want to admit it, but it's like we have these innate set points and nothing much that happens to us changes our disposition. I read this study where they followed people who'd won the lottery and people who'd become paraplegics. You'd think one extreme is gonna make you euphoric and the other suicidal. But the study shows that, after about six months, as soon as people had gotten used to their new situation they were, more or less, the same.
- The same?
- Yeah. Like, if they were basically an optimistic, jovial person they're now an optimistic, jovial person in a wheelchair. If they're a petty, miserable asshole they're a petty, miserable asshole with a new Cadillac, a house and a boat.

Before Sunset

When we invented fight club, Tyler and I, neither of us had ever been in a fight before. If you've never been in a fight, you wonder. About getting hurt, about what you're capable of doing against another man.
...At the time, my life just seemed too complete, and maybe we have to break everything to make something better out of ourselves.
...I swung my fist in a roundhouse at Tyler's jaw like in every cowboy movie we'd ever seen, and me, my fist connected with the side of Tyler's neck.
Shit, I said, that didn't count. I want to try it again.
Tyler said, "Yeah it counted," and hit me, straight on, pow, just like a cartoon boxing glove on a spring on Saturday morning cartoons, right in the middle of my chest and I fell back against a car. We both stood there, Tyler rubbing the side of his neck and me holding a hand on my chest, both of us knowing we'd gotten somewhere we'd never been and like the cat and mouse in cartoons, we were still alive and wanted to see how far we could take this thing and still be alive.

C. Palahniuk, Fight Club

Losing all hope is freedom.
***
This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

C. Palahniuk, Fight Club

• I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.


• You know, I have a theory that hieroglyphics are just an ancient comic strip about a character named Sphinxy.

• There are no features on the DVD other than a trailer. Also, there are no scene selections because David Lynch wanted the film to be one whole experience rather than scenes.
• Filmed in sequence.
• This was the first of director David Lynch's films in which his parents appeared.
  хм, интересно, посмотрел весь актёрский состав - с фамилиями Lynch больше никого не нашёл (должны были быть, по идее, Donald и Sunny Lynch). интересно, и куда он их в фильме пристроил?

I love these easy evenings
that you spend alone
and all that noisy sounds around
they seem so far and distant
they make no difference for you, they flow so slow...
like there's fog...
which is so thick and dense, that makes you barely move...

there's no more souls are left
but yours
in the calmness of this room
and the in the infinity of this world

Loud commentary and cell phone fumbling may be distracting, but new research suggests that the presence of other people may enhance our movie-watching experiences. Over the course of the film, movie-watchers influence one another and gradually synchronize their emotional responses. This mutual mimicry also affects each participant's evaluation of the overall experience -- the more in sync we are with the people around us, the more we like the movie.

ScienceDaily (Dec. 7, 2007)
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Sprinkle is known as the "prostitute and porn star turned sex educator and artist".

The first porn star known to have earned a Ph.D., Sprinkle received her Ph.D. in Human Sexuality from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco. Her work, spanning more than three decades, is studied at many universities, in theater history, women's studies, and film studies courses. She also is a faculty member at The New School of Erotic Touch.

Show what you feel

The IT support department at the medical company Leo Pharma outside of Copenhagen, Denmark, is a critical part of the organization. If IT aren’t picking up their phones, Leo’s 4,000 employees have nowhere to go with their IT-related questions and problems. To ensure that the phones are always manned, a huge whiteboard with a space for each support worker shows who’s at work and manning the phones at any given time.

The IT department knows that people have good days and bad days, and they’re fine with that. They have a simple policy: When employees arrive in the morning, they can place a green or a red magnetic tag next to their name. Green means, “I’m having a good day,” and red means, “I’m having a bad day.”

When a co-worker storms in the door without saying good morning, places a red marker next to his name, and sits at his desk scowling, you don’t have to wonder, “Was it something I said?”

This is a great policy that does two things:

1. It makes it visible who is having a good or a bad day, and people with red markers are given a little space and leeway. If somebody puts up a red marker every day for a week then it is clear that steps need to be taken to help that person.

2. It makes it permissible to have a bad day. We all have bad days, but if you have to hide it and pretend to be chipper, it takes longer to get out of the bad mood.

What often happens at Leo is that an employee will place a red marker in the morning, and then change it to a green one later that morning. When people are given permission to have a bad day, they recover faster and there’s less chance that they will spread their bad mood to their co-workers.

Take a course in something—anything!

Pixar, the company known and loved for movies like Toy Story and Finding Nemo, has created something they call Pixar University, that lets employees take classes in moviemaking, sure, but also in pottery, improvisational theatre, sculpture, drawing and much more.

How does learning pottery make you a better Pixar employee? Randy S. Nelson, the dean of Pixar University, explains:

We’ve made the leap from an idea-centered business to a people-centered business. Instead of developing ideas, we develop people. Instead of investing in ideas, we invest in people. We’re trying to create a culture of learning, filled with lifelong learners. It’s no trick for talented people to be interesting, but it’s a gift to be interested. We want an organization filled with interested people².

I have enjoyed courses in painting, creative writing, improv theatre and singing, and while none of this is directly relevant to the work I do, it all helps me to grow and develop. You never know when something that seems totally irrelevant is going to spark a creative breakthrough, precisely because it is not directly connected to your field of work.

Pixar realizes that happy people make better movies and that learning is a key part of making them happy. It doesn’t matter what they’re learning, as long as they’re learning, growing and developing—and having fun doing it.

Happiness at work is contagious