Coffee

Coffee A Health Drink?
Yocto Yotta wrote to mention an article from The Independent which would seem to indicate that coffee has numerous health benefits, and could be construed to be a ‘health drink’. From the article

A study has found that coffee contributes more antioxidants – which have been linked with fighting heart disease and cancer – to the diet than cranberries, apples or tomatoes…[antioxidants in coffee] have been linked to a number of health benefits, including protection against heart disease and cancer. Studies have associated coffee drinking with a reduced risk of liver and colon cancer, type two diabetes, and Parkinson’s disease.

(Via Slashdot)

Maybe Woody Allen is right and someday we’ll discover that cigarettes are healthy…

Weekend

This stage is my life (and yours). Only there are no rehearsals, and there is no dialog I can learn by heart. I may have various acting coaches that can inform my decisions, my dialog, my actions and my movement on this stage. But they are peripheral to my position on the stage. These teachers stand on the sidelines, while I am in the spotlight. And, unlike a movie which could theoretically last forever, my performance has a deadline called death.

The impermanence is the key, because it makes every moment and every decision I make on that stage (life) count. It makes the whole experience more precious. Just as a blossom that opens for a few hours only, seems so much more precious to us than a flower that blooms for months at a time.

The teacher can only point at the moon – if we stare at his/her finger instead of finding the moon not much can be done… except to try again, and again.

I had a great weekend. On Friday I met Genpo Roshi and a couple of friends for lunch at Maria’s. From there we went to Temple Beth Shalom, where he gave a quick demonstration of the Big Mind process, which he is offering to facilitate in Israel in order to improve the dialog between Israel and Palestine. Watching Roshi facilitate the Big Mind process is especially fun when one can observe people who are skeptical or resist the idea, because in the end everyone gets it… From the temple I took Roshi to my acupuncturist and then about five of us ended up at my house with me trying to throw a quick dinner together before Roshi went to Upaya for the first part of the workshop.

On Saturday I attended the Big Mind workshop at Upaya, which I enjoyed very much.
Zendo
At lunch-time I rushed home to practice guitar before returning to Upaya for the afternoon workshop. In the evening I took Roshi and a couple of friends to Andiamo, another local restaurant I like.

After that we drove back to Upaya and I played guitar in the Zendo, which was a rare treat for me. No microphones, no speakers, no stage – just a guitar, myself and around 60 people sitting on the floor, listening. I played 6 or 7 songs, including Silence: No More Longing of course. I also played a Solea Por Bulerias (from Winter Rose), Snakecharmer, a new Buleria, and Santa Fe among others. Then I asked whether anybody had questions and we talked for about half an hour before I ended with Bombay. The encore was a medley consisting of Querencia, Spring Rain and a little improvisation.

Of course there is no way to do something like this on a large stage, but I started thinking about the dialog with the audience. Two things came to mind: I have never enjoyed talking during my shows, claiming that it was difficult to switch between music-mind and talking-mind… that much is true, but I suspect it shows my own inability to switch perspectives and that is something that I should be able to learn to do. If I can switch between little self and Big Mind I can switch between music and talking. The other thing that came to mind was that one could facilitate a dialog with our audience as follows: have a whole lot of little index cards at our merch table and encourage people to write down any questions they might have for me – this would be encouraged by the folks at the merch table and I could mention it before the intermission as well… during the second half of the show I could select two or three of the indexcards/questions and could answer them between songs…

After my concert the roshis (Genpo Roshi and Joan Halifax Roshi) and three friends ended up in my kitchen again for drinks and talking. I sat on the kitchen counter top, because I don’t have enough chairs (note to self!!) and had a wonderful time listening to my guests. Joan Halifax Roshi is a truly captivating person. I encouraged her to start a blog, because she travels so much and in November will be a panelist at the Investigating the Mind 2005 conference with the Dalai Lama – you can ask him a question for that conference HERE. She could blog straight from her Blackberry, which would be fascinating…

Reducing Birthrate

Boiled Tadpoles

Wired News
Scientists have known for years that an increase of even 1 degree Celsius in testicular or scrotal temperature can decrease the production of healthy sperm by as much as 40 percent. In the Stony Brook study, researchers found that test subjects who sat for an hour with running laptops on their laps had a median increase in scrotal temperature of 2.6 to 2.8 degrees Celsius.
from Laptops a Hot Fertility Issue
(Via dj rekluse)

Quick + Expressive

Last night I called Jon and told him I wanted to do something quick and expressive. He and I take many months to record our albums and it involves a lot of planning, layering, mixing and so on. Yesterday it hit me that I would really like to record an album in one take for a change. I proposed that I would come to his studio, armed only with my electric guitar and my new Pod and maybe some effect boxes… Jon would play synthesizers or bass or whatever and that we would sit down and create a new album right there… maybe we would complete the t-one 2005 he started – or maybe it would become something altogether different. It certainly wouldn’t be nouveau flamenco or jazz…

Received the new Pod the other day and am loving to work with it. Line6 now has a nice software editor that connects to the Pod via USB and lets me edit the sounds on my laptop. That was my biggest gripe about working with the older Pod I have been using on stage. I hate staring at those little screens and once I found some decent sounds I never changed them and never explored the full potential of the machine.

That was also the reason I bought the Guitar Rig as I was excited about editing the sounds in my laptop, but Alan thought it sounded whimpy when I tried to use it on stage and asked me to switch back to the Pod and I thought that latency was a problem with the Guitar Rig as well.

The PODxt Pro seems to be the best of both worlds for me: it has a killer sound and using the Line6 software I can edit the sounds on my PowerBook.