4 Noble Truths

Teaching children resilience

• Shape an Optimistic Explanatory Style - model a positive style yourself. Criticize behavior, not character
• Teach your children their ABCs - adversity, belief, consequence (as in I'm OK, you're OK; transactional analysis)
• Teach your children how to dispute their negative thoughts.
• Let Them Fail -They need to learn to persist in the face of failure. Without failure and persistence, there'm no mastery (the feeling of being in control and knowing that taking certain actions get specific results). And without mastery, there's no self-esteem and no resiliency.
• Give Unconditional Love and Conditional Praise
• Internal Locus of Control -  help your child feel less like a victim and more in control of his life.  Do this by emphasizing a correlation between action and consequences.  Parents who gave their kids the most rules and limits had children with the highest self-esteem, while those who gave their kids the most freedom had kids with the lowest self-esteem. Kids want limits, and they're essential to their healthy progress.

From Art of Manliness

Neanderthal

Appeared 400 000 years ago, spread throughout Europe and Near East when climate was still virtually tropical. Lived in caves, hunted in groups. Could make tools eg scrapers, axes and would cook (some) food. Big noses, extremely muscular. Named after the Neander valley in Germany where bones first recognized as being distinct from Homo sapiens.

But then the Ice Age came, and conditions deteriorated. Plus Homo sapiens from the East began competing for hunting grounds and caves. Homo sapiens had more language and manual skills (could sew hides together!), probably just more flexible at dealing with changing conditions. DNA shows that we have Neanderthal genes, so there must have been some interbreeding - but voluntary, or rape!?

From In Our Time, Radio 4

Miles to go before I sleep

Watched Richard Jobson's film, 16 Years of Alcohol. Very poetic, between the episodes of violence. Finishes with these lines from "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" by American poet Robert Frost:

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Cool matter

A star comes to the end of its life. It explodes as a supernova,
showering particles out into the space - some light, gaseous, others
heavier, such as soot (carbon) and sand (silica).

Where these particles are swept together at sufficient density, perhaps
around a young star, itself formed from collapsing clouds of hydrogen
and helium eg in the Orion Nebula, they form larger and larger dust
grains. When they reach about a kilometre diameter, then can begin to
congregate gravitationally rather than randomly. From these
planetesimals, larger and larger masses form eg planets, moons (eg
Phobos and Deimos, the moons of Mars), comets, asteroids. From the
starborn atoms of carbon come the building blocks of life - carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere, captured by plants, eaten by animals,
recycled into new life, new tissues, the skin on the tip of your little
finger.

Citizen E87 (Calibre 8700)

So I turned 40 yesterday, and Pauline and I went to Argyll Arcade to spend my birthday money on a new watch. Was quite stressful, given that you can move a couple of feet along and be looking at prices with a couple of extra zeroes on the end, plus the variety is extraordinary.

But very pleased with my last minute find, a black metal Citizen. Not a Seiko, which Dad had when we were growing up, and solar powered rather than kinetic. It has a carbon fibre effect on the dial, and I love the luminosity in the dark, something very satisfying about that.  But pretty cool - if it doesn't get any light on the face for 30 minutes, it will turn off the second hand to save energy. If the internal battery is low and needs to get a good solar top up, it lets you know by making the second hand move at 2 second intervals. But it will still run for a year and a half before actually stopping.

And anyway, quartz watches keep the time better than automatic (mechanical) ones...

Munch's Scream

Actually a series of paintings and prints (Munch clearly tried to
monopolize on his success). Munch's mother died of TB when he was 7,
his sister died of the same when he was 16. One of his younger sisters
was diagnosed with schizophrenia at a young age. He himself wrote that
he inherited 2 of mankind's most terrible enemies - consumption and
insanity. He developed a respiratory illness himself in childhood, and
was told by his father (a doctor) to prepare himself for death, while
the family kept a vigil by his bedside. Other famous works include The
Sick Child, based on his sister's death, and a cycle of paintings called
the Frieze of Life - A Poem about Life, Love and Death.

Angels

There are over 200 mentions of angels in the bible. In only 2 of those
do they have wings. They probably precede the bible, being messengers
from the gods (angelos, in Greek). They have taken over in the minds of
the superstitious from saints, who lost some of their influence during
the reformation.

NHS Lanarkshire Confidentiality and Disclaimer Notice

***********************************************************************************************************************************************

The information contained in this email may be subject to public
disclosure under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

This email is intended only for the addressee named above and the
contents should not be disclosed to any other person or copies
taken. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the
sender and do not necessarily represent those of NHS Lanarkshire
(NHSL) unless otherwise specifically stated.
As Internet communications are not secure NHSL do not accept legal
responsibility for the contents of this message or responsibility
for any change made to this message after the original sender sent
it.

We advise you to carry out your own virus check before opening any
attachment, as we cannot accept liability for any damage sustained
as a result of any software viruses.

If you have received this email in error, please contact the IM&T
Helpdesk on 01698 258787 between 08:30 and 17:15 Monday to Friday.

http://www.nhslanarkshire.org.uk/

***********************************************************************************************************************************************

Tony Judd on Social Democracy

[About his new book, Ill Fared the Land]

What I tried to write in the book was a sort of plea to reopen an
ethical conversation about what kind of society we want to live in. Not
a conversation about how to be efficient, how to be wealthy, how to
succeed, how to improve GDP, how to achieve goal A/B/C... but how to
imagine a better society.

For that we need institutions, we need policies, but above all we need
to be able to understand what we want. We can't do that if we can't
think about it, we can't think about it if we don't have the language.
So I'm trying to encourage the resurgence of an ethical language of
politics

[from Night Waves, Radio 3]

NHS Lanarkshire Confidentiality and Disclaimer Notice

***********************************************************************************************************************************************

The information contained in this email may be subject to public
disclosure under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

This email is intended only for the addressee named above and the
contents should not be disclosed to any other person or copies
taken. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the
sender and do not necessarily represent those of NHS Lanarkshire
(NHSL) unless otherwise specifically stated.
As Internet communications are not secure NHSL do not accept legal
responsibility for the contents of this message or responsibility
for any change made to this message after the original sender sent
it.

We advise you to carry out your own virus check before opening any
attachment, as we cannot accept liability for any damage sustained
as a result of any software viruses.

If you have received this email in error, please contact the IM&T
Helpdesk on 01698 258787 between 08:30 and 17:15 Monday to Friday.

http://www.nhslanarkshire.org.uk/

***********************************************************************************************************************************************

Drink and crime

In 2007, almost half of prisoners said they were drunk at the time of their crime. In murder cases the proportion of those drunk or under the influence of drink and drugs is two thirds.

NHSconfed.org report on alcohol claims cost to the NHS is £2.7 billion per year, and the 3rd leading cause of disease burden in developed countries.  Only 1 in 18 alcohol dependent people is receiving treatment.

El Anatsui

A Ghanaian artist, an Ewe no less (from the Volta region), who works with modern materials to create cloths that resemble traditional kente dress. Looks fabulous, would love to see for real.

http://www.octobergallery.co.uk/microsites/anatsui/