nature Archives - Page 3 of 9 - Joshua Spodek

Measuring costs of disasters, modeling your world, and accounting

A hurricane or tropical storm is hovering in the Atlantic soon to hit the east coast, including my home in New York City. I keep seeing predictions of the size of the damages from however the storm affects us. You see similar predictions of the size of how many things affect us -- people estimate, say, how much money in productivity traffic delays cause us and things like that. I always wonder, relative to what? And when I answer, I feel I find untested, unchallenged, and often unjustified assumptions in people's models for their worlds. Or misattribution of cause and effect. It seems to me the storm, as a part of nature, isn't causing damage so much as we built things in ways that were…

October 29, 2012

Blog / Humor / Nature

The metric system isn’t that much better

I think it helps to look at the world from a different point of view sometimes. You see things differently. When I did yoga, sometimes my teacher would have us cross our arms left over right instead of right over left (or vice versa, depending on how you did it normally). If you've never done it, try it. I doubt it will make you suddenly enlightened, but it feels weird in a way that might make you wonder how many other things you assumed were just one way don't have to be. So today's post is about values, understanding why you have yours, and how you probably have some for reasons you don't understand or care about. You may think you're reading about measurement systems,…

October 20, 2012

My beautiful eight-minute Shanghai commute

Art / Blog

My beautiful eight-minute Shanghai commute

Speaking about commuting, as I did yesterday, I decided to record my Shanghai morning commute. It's normally about eight minutes. I could probably do it in six-and-a-half without running if I had to. So I brought my camera and took pictures every dozen yards or so sometimes looking forward, other times to the side. What can I say? I consider community more important all the time. I live in a beautiful part of the French Concession. I started with the interior of the old three-story building I live in. People call the building old Chinese style in that people use its common spaces for storage, drying racks, cooking spaces, and so on... a different view of privacy than the U.S. I say a few words…

September 25, 2012

Blog / Humor / Nature

Our polluted world

Today's post isn't on one of my major themes. Trained in physics, I like looking at nature and understanding patterns. I noticed something remarkable yesterday when a couple friends talking about visiting Hong Kong and Beijing talked about how polluted those cities' air is. As we all know,Â many (all major? most major?) cities are polluted to where living in them is like smoking packs of cigarettes a day. People outside cities create just as much pollution -- often more -- than people inside them so even if their air is cleaner, they're contributing just as much. I'm no anthropologist, but I think our world once had zero pollution, that the waste humans produced could be used to fertilize crops. We've passed the point where…

September 20, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Fitness / Nature

Where do you buy fruits and vegetables?

I was inspired to write the past couple days of food-related posts by an article about the food store I grew up with in Philadelphia called Weaver's Way, which my family called just "the co-op." The store is a cooperative, meaning you have to be a co-owner to shop and you have to work a certain number of hours per year. When I was younger and lived in Philadelphia I had to work some of the hours for my family. Whether you consider buying and preparing food relevant to leadership or life-improvement, I'll leave for you to decide. As for me, the connection seems clear, particularly if you or the people you lead eat and if what they eat affects their behavior. Anyway, back to…

September 19, 2012

One of the best exercises I know to raise your self-awareness

Awareness / Blog / Exercises / Nature

One of the best exercises I know to raise your self-awareness

I got this exercise from a book by Jon Kabat-Zinn, who writes on self-awareness, mindfulness, and meditation. I find it helped me understand a lot about how I perceive my world and how I can influence how I perceive it. I don't know if he made it up or got it from somewhere. Anyway, all you need is three raisins and some free time. The Three Raisins exercise Preparation: get three raisins. Put them in front of you. Turn off your phone and computer. Put away any books or anything distracting. Don't schedule anything after. The exercise: eat the three raisins as if you had never observed one before, like you came from another planet. Use all your senses. Take your time. Feel their…

September 18, 2012

Why food matters

Blog / Fitness / Leadership

Why food matters

I don't know if I have to explain how shopping for, preparing, and eating food qualifies as fundamental to self-awareness and therefore leadership. A few years ago I would have considered food shopping irrelevant to self-awareness. I've changed. I'll start with an aside on how big an effect just gardening can have with Victory Gardens. During the World Wars, when mainstream food production dropped, governments promoted their citizens planting so-called victory gardens -- using whatever spare land anyone had, even window-sills, to plant fruits, vegetables, herbs or whatever you could grow. They started them in parks, some continuing as gardens to today. Here are a couple posters for the project. and Apparently, at their peak, victory gardens produced nearly half the vegetables Americans consumed and…

September 17, 2012

Blog / Freedom / Nature

You can still learn new things

After posting about how Churchill and others overcame impediments on their ways to greatness, I saw an article in the New York Times about great historical figures humbly learning things late in life -- Marie Curie learned to swim after winning two Nobel Prizes, Leo Tolstoy learning to ride a bike after writing War and Peace, Dwight Eisenhower learning to paint after World War II ended, and a couple other examples. Inspiration isn't that hard to find. A favorite example for me is Ernest Rutherford, one of the great experimental physicists. To understand the results of what we call the Gold Foil Experiment. I won't go into the details since the link is right there, but it basically discovered the nucleus and established the process…

September 16, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Fitness / Nature

Broccoli rabe versus sweets

I'll describe an effect across many spheres of human life, including, probably, yours. I'll describe it in the realm of food, but it applies all over. Most people, when they don't think much about it, like sweets and comfort food -- not always that healthy. If you gave them, say, some broccoli rabe, even cooked to perfection -- say just lightly fried in olive oil with a touch of lemon juice and salt -- they wouldn't like it. They'd say it didn't have flavor or tasted bad or boring. They might complain they couldn't eat it fast, like a candy bar. Or it didn't crunch, like chips. If you wean them off the intense, simple, short-term, pleasure of sugar, fat, salt, and the chemical concoctions…

September 13, 2012

Blog / Education / Fitness / Leadership / Tips

If you want to change something you do, its opposite usually is no better. Look for its complement.

People seem to want to change a lot about them. I see them trying to do the opposite of what they are trying to change. Sometimes it works. More often trying to do the opposite of what they want to stop reinforces doing it more. Food For example, overweight people often think if they eat too much they should try the opposite and try to eat less. But dieting seems to predict obesity more than prevent it -- that is, people who diet tend to be more obese than those who don't (sorry I don't have a source, so feel free to read this part skeptically). I find the complement to eating too much is not to eat less but to savor and enjoy your…

September 9, 2012

Blog / Fitness / Nature

Being overweight looks depressing

Some people choose to be overweight -- Mario Batali, for example, seems to love fattening food, knows how eating it will affect him, and eats it, accepting, even celebrating, the consequences with pleasure. I take my hat off to him. This post isn't about him. I should also point out I don't consider being overweight bad. Regular readers know I don't consider such things good, bad, right, or wrong. I'm mostly interested in consequences. If someone achieves whatever weight they want, I support them, independent of what a doctor says. I should also note that I think tracing causes of obesity leads to our huge agri-business subsidies that make unhealthy food cheaper than healthy and to what I consider counterproductive laws that allow poor labeling,…

September 4, 2012

Soursops — my new favorite fruit!

Soursops — my new favorite fruit!

Fruit vendors in Boracay had some crazy tropical fruits I'd never seen before, along with the delicious and numerous mangoes of various varieties. We passed on durians this time, though they were there. On a whim we got one of this odd looking fruit they called "Gayabanos," which Wikipedia redirects to Soursop. Weird name in English, but it has many names in Central and South America, Africa, and Asia. It tastes like a mangosteen, but is bigger and easier to eat, with fewer seeds. Holy cow, it tastes amazing! If I could describe it I would. It's tangy, sweet, tart, creamy, juicy, and more. Wikipedia says Its flavor has been described as a combination of strawberry and pineapple with sour citrus flavor notes contrasting with…

August 16, 2012

Boracay!

Boracay!

Though I try to post mainly on leadership, it's hard not to post sometimes when you have a vacation of a lifetime. Still, for those interested in Four-Hour-Work-Week or Mr-Money-Mustache living -- that is, needing little -- you'll be glad to see that working only one or two days a week can bring you to one of the world's top-rated beaches -- Boracay! Last week a friend and I planned to visit another friend in Manila. Ten days of monsoon rains flooded that city, so they suggested I check out Boracay, an island I'd never heard of, but was a short, cheap flight away. Below are some pictures. They couldn't capture two of the island's best features. First, in the ocean. The fish and invertebrates…

August 15, 2012

Natural beauty in North Korea, part 2: beaches

Nature / NorthKorea

Natural beauty in North Korea, part 2: beaches

Who would expect beautiful beaches in North Korea? Visiting that far north in April, we didn't find warm sunny beaches, but the Earth is beautiful and it's hard to hide that. Some of the beachfront hotels looks nice, almost Mediterranean, from afar. Up close you saw the hotels couldn't have been seriously maintained in decades. One hotel had zero hot water. We had to heat water by dropping a heating element into a tub. Anyway, I hope the pictures convey some of the natural beauty we saw there.

July 24, 2012

Natural beauty in North Korea, part 1: mountains

Nature / NorthKorea

Natural beauty in North Korea, part 1: mountains

I doubt many people would expect to see much natural beauty in North Korea. I was surprised to see a lot once we got out of Pyongyang. You could only call most of the land stark. Little of it was arable. I don't claim to be an experienced photographer -- see Joseph's blog for that quality of picture -- but I saw some great stuff. My pictures don't do the land justice. The lag in my camera combined with always being in the bus meant I consistently took pictures of something a second away from something beautiful. Anyway, click on the images for larger versions and contact me for higher resolutions. …

July 22, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Fitness / Freedom

My fitness habits, part 4: Nothing special about what I did

Since so many people don't like their physical condition, don't find reward or joy in exercising, and regard these aspects of their life as punishments, I imagine many of them want to change their beliefs and behaviors, perhaps using my example as inspiration. Many people may not care too, I guess. I've written a lot on the topics -- enough that it might seem overwhelming. Can anyone do what I do? I didn't do anything anyone else couldn't. Maybe they don't want to or haven't figured out how to, but they could. I don't read many diet or exercise books, but I have a feeling they don't make a point of focusing on your emotions, which I consider the foundation for successful change. I focus…

July 20, 2012

Blog / Fitness / Freedom

My fitness habits, part 3: Exercise

As I've written before, exercise for me is about the emotions it creates. I start exercises for joy, fun, friendship, etc. For many people exercise seems punishing. If I didn't realize I, like anyone, could make exercise create whatever emotions I wanted and I felt stuck with punishment, I wouldn't do it. Luckily I learned to find the joy, fun, etc in exercise -- as anyone can -- and built from there. History I've exercised consistently since I started running cross country in high school in the 80s. I was chubby as a kid -- at least I remember my older step-brother teasing me about being chubby before I started sports. Although they signed me up for little league baseball and soccer, I don't remember…

July 19, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Fitness / Freedom

My fitness beliefs and habits, part 2: Food and Eating

What I eat I don't feel like I pay attention to what I eat that much, although I've habitualized a lot so I probably eat healthily without thinking about it. I don't pay attention to proteins versus carbohydrates. I definitely don't count calories. I think paying attention to those things means you're eating the wrong things. I mean, I'm kind of aware of those things, but the more I eat fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains, the less I pay attention to proteins, carbohydrates, and calories and the better my body seems. How can you eat too much spinach, mangoes, or oats? Can you? I mean, your body will stop you before you can. With sugary beverages, I've noticed your tongue always sends signals…

July 18, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Fitness / Freedom

My fitness beliefs and habits, part 1: Principles

A reader asked I like what you said about the body being a reflection of how we live our life. I also agree about the genetics; its too much of a cop out to say that you canâ€™t help being obese. I do have a question though. Your photos show that you are in shape but you have previously posted that your workout regimen consists of only a minute of burpees twice a day. As someone who works out an hour a day to stay in shape this blows my mind. Are you rationing calories as well or just watching what you eat? Do you have any before/after photos showing the progress made after 6 months on this program? Context The short response to that…

July 17, 2012

My satellite in the news!

With all the news of the Higgs boson, you may have missed a big discovery in dark matter, a major remaining mystery of physics and astronomy. Most of the matter we can detect in the universe we can't see directly. We can only see how it affects other things through gravity. Very mysterious! We have almost no way to constrain its properties besides gravity or experiment with it. Yet it seems to make up 85% of the universe. On July 4th Nature published "A filament of dark matter between two clusters of galaxies," According to one of its authors, "It's a resounding confirmation of the standard theory of structure formation of the universe. And it's a confirmation people didn't think was possible at this point."…

July 10, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Nature

Would you eat the cherry tomato?

Here is a deep question about values, spontaneity, risk, adventure, the best things in life, and your appetite for them. The context It begins with my mom's garden years ago when she lived in Nebraska. Now I'm not that big on tomatoes, like some people are, and less so then than now. But when I tasted the cherry tomatoes from that garden they tasted like sunshine. I couldn't believe how much flavor they had -- sweet, tangy, juicy... everything you could hope for in a piece of fruit. And with all the vines there, you could pop cherry tomatoes in your mouth all day. There were more on the vie and overnight yet more would appear. Plus she hadÂ -- I should mention it was…

July 9, 2012

Blog / Fitness / Nature / NorthKorea

Ultimate in Shanghai!

I played ultimate in Shanghai for the first time Monday and Saturday since the tournament in August in North Korea (in particular getting the end zone D and catching the goal to win the game), which was the first time in something like five years. Wow, nothing compares to playing ultimate. Even with probably 90 degree temperatures and high humidity, running around, throwing, and catching was awesome. It's like what our bodies evolved for. At 40, I thought I was done playing, but I think I'll play regularly this summer. They have games scheduled twice a week and the community, as with ultimate communities everywhere, is fun, welcoming, international, and spirited. Come to think of it, I saw a random guy in Singapore dressed like…

July 3, 2012

Durians!

Durians!

I just visited a street lined with fruit stands serving durians. They sell other fruits -- including mangoes, mangosteens, jack fruit, dragon fruits, and others -- but only serve the durians at the tables. If you haven't heard of or eaten durians, here are some pictures. You can see they are unusual -- sharp on spiny on the outside, looking like guts on the inside -- but the smell makes them unique. Here is a description from Wikipedia The edible flesh emits a distinctive odour, strong and penetrating even when the husk is intact. Some people regard the durian as fragrant; others find the aroma overpowering and offensive. The smell evokes reactions from deep appreciation to intense disgust, and has been described variously as almonds,…

June 19, 2012

On creating emotions

I was talking to a friend who felt mildly depressed about learning to manage your mood. She had read my friend's story I posted recently about changing his emotions. (As an aside, I have to rank his experiment among the most effective practices you can do to learn to manage your emotions.) I talked to her about how most of my clients can change their environments and behavior easily. To change your environment you can hang out with different friends, change your job, get rid of your tv, etc. To change your behavior you use willpower -- even if they don't think they can change long-term, they at least realize they can go to the gym once. We spend most of our time working on…

June 17, 2012

Awareness / Blog / Nature

How you see the world when you see it from space

I came across some quotes from astronauts who had seen the Earth from space that increased my sense of the beauty and fragility of life here -- as far as we know, the only life at all. The quotes surprised me partly because I think of astronauts as cowboy- and engineer-types. That surprise strengthened the feeling of the quotes, because you don't expect cowboy engineers to promote protecting the environment, look for the beauty of nature, or talk about peace on earth among different cultures. Or at least I didn't. Everybody knows "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind," "The eagle has landed," and "Houston, we have a problem." I think you'll enjoy these, especially if you haven't heard them before.…

June 6, 2012

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