24/7: Twenty 20 Things You Didn't Know About... You Didn't Know About

Discover Magazine concludes their 10 publications annually with a fun page filled with 20 interesting facts on a common subject. Geeks fin' to get titillated! Honoring the seventh of this month with another twenty-for seven post are twenty 20 Things You Didn't Know About... that you didn't know about. Each subject links to Discover's twenty facts, and here I follow them with some of my favorites.


Time: "According to quantum theory, the shortest moment of time that can exist is known as Planck time, or 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 second."

Sleep: "A six-year study of a million adults showed that people who get only six to seven hours of sleep a night have a lower death rate than those who get eight hours. Maybe it's those late nights watching QVC."

Sex: "Marvin Gaye breaks it down in “Let’s Get It On”—what could be simpler? Psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin take a different view. They surveyed 444 people [pdf] and found 237 reasons why people have sex... Believe it or not, biologists cannot agree on the reason for sex either."

Fire: "Fire is an event, not a thing. Heating wood or other fuel releases volatile vapors that can rapidly combust with oxygen in the air. Most of the fuels we use derive their energy from trapped solar rays. In photosynthesis, sunlight and heat make chemical energy (in the form of wood or fossil fuel); So a bonfire is basically a tree running in reverse."

Alcohol: "According to the Drunken Monkey Hypothesis, our zest for alcoholic beverages derives from our distant ancestors’ impulse to seek the ripest, most energy-intensive fruits."

Water: "Before 2009, federal regulators did not require water bottlers to remove E. coli... Actually, E. coli doesn’t sound so bad. In 1999 the Natural Resources Defense Council found that one brand of spring water came from a well in an industrial parking lot near a hazardous waste dump."

Light: "In the confined space of an Easy-Bake oven, a 100-watt bulb can create a temperature of 325 degrees Fahrenheit."

Nothing: "In space, no one can hear you scream: Sound, a mechanical wave, cannot travel through a vacuum. Without matter to vibrate through, there is only silence... So what if Kramer falls in a forest? Luckily, electromagnetic waves, including light and radio waves, need no medium to travel through, letting TV stations broadcast endless reruns of Seinfeld, the show about nothing."

Skin: "Fingerprints increase friction and help grip objects. New World monkeys have similar prints on the undersides of their tails, the better to grasp as they swing from branch to branch." (Also, see "HANDS!")

Digestion: "Your stomach’s primary digestive juice, hydrochloric acid, can dissolve metal, but plastic toys that go down the hatch will come out the other end as good as new. (A choking hazard is still a choking hazard, though.)... Same with crayons, hair, and chewing gum—all of which will pass through within a few days, no matter what you’ve heard."

Obesity: "Stand by your man: More than a decade ago, Manuel Uribe, now weighing 1,200 pounds (the equivalent of five baby elephants) and bedridden for the past five years, was abandoned by his wife because she was frightened by his increasing size."

Death: "The trigger of death, in all cases, is lack of oxygen. Its decline may prompt muscle spasms, or the "agonal phase," from the Greek word agon, or contest."

Clouds: "When moist, warm air rises to a cooler elevation, water condenses onto microscopic “seeds” like dust, ash, or bacteria. Water + seeds + updraft = clouds."

Magnetism: "Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines generate a field 60,000 times as intense as the earth’s to vibrate the hydrogen atoms in your body; in response, the atoms emit radio waves that are analyzed to produce a map of your insides."

Stress: "Stressed rats’ brains showed shrunken neurons in the dorsomedial striatum (an area associated with goal-directed behavior) and growth in the dorsolateral striatum (related to habitual behavior)."

Lab Accidents: "The world has scores of superpowerful particle accelerators. Last year, a fireball created at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Upton, New York, had the characteristics of a black hole. Physicists are reasonably sure that no such black holes could escape and consume Earth."

Money: "Filthy lucre: In a study last year, researchers found more cocaine residue on U.S. bills than on any other currency. Also found on money: staphylococcus bacteria and fecal matter."

Language: "Grüss dich, Dunkelheit, mein alter Freund. Three- to five-day-olds born into French-speaking families tend to cry with the rising intonation characteristic of French; babies with German-speaking parents cry with falling tones, much like spoken German. Infants may start learning language in the womb, it seems."

Genius: "In the 1990s Bell Labs found that its most valued and productive electrical engineers were not those endowed with genius but those who excelled in rapport, empathy, cooperation, persuasion, and the ability to build consensus."

Future: "In 2205 humans reconquer Earth and hire polymer engineers to replace melting glaciers with plastic substitutes that are identical to the originals in every way, except that they aren’t wet or cold."

A Breath of Fresh Air

The cleared vacuum filter swirls dust everywhere.
Hair dead skin and miscellaneous waste particles scoured from the fan and bookshelf, 
My own ashes are scattered in the air.
Breath in. 
Breath out.
Thoroughly cleansed as this home, I am reborn.



-MANGO

Personal Mission Statement

My mom professed a challenged during a special coffee conversation we were blessed to be together and share: What is your mission statement? Our home church had been rewriting their mission statement, and as businesses, charities, universities et al. clarify their communal purpose with one, so might we with our own.

To write my own mission statement, I explored, "Who am I becoming and what are my priorities?" and, "How might I best word my statement so as to generalize across time, activities, settings, and intentions?"I wanted to write something dynamic rather than static. Using few words so as to be memorable, words used must carry great weight and be ambiguous as to transfer. Various aspects of my personality must cohere; I am always a student and also a therapist, a teacher, significant other, family member, and a friend. I want to express wonder, humility, sincerity, and self-control. I hope to inspire adaptation and encourage empathy. I am more motivated when able to interpret or establish purpose. I hope to be a wholesome influence on people, activities, and ideas. I want a mission statement that describes while also inspiring ongoing growth.

Now, I proudly share my personal mission statement:

"Awestruck, always, and becoming awesome: shaping acceptance, presence, direction, faith, and reverence within myself, those around me, and my environment."

The words and phrasing of a personal mission statement hold personal significance to the writer. I would like to pass this challenge on. May you readers invest more time in thought than just spent in reading. Take five (or twenty, or an afternoon), and muse upon yourself, your life, your mission statement.

Training For Independece

"Teachers training for independence should  1) assess specific values and arrange these values in a hierarchical order from the most to the least important. The next step is to  2) define specific behaviors that relate to each of the abstract values, and then  3) teach these behaviors (values) following the behavioral model. Regular routines to occupy one’s time can be developed in advance and be readily available when a person needs to be self-reliant. (80)"

Perhaps you may clarify your values and include them in a personal mission statement. However you choose to determine your values, you must apply them by specifying things you will actually do - and doing them. Teachers will have practiced techniques to prepare their students for academic transfer, but should also prepare their students for autonomy. Behavioral techniques used to teach a child to use the toilet on their own may be more similar to those used to prepare a graduate student to conduct research independently following graduation than you think. Those same techniques to modify a student's behavior will effectively shape your own behavior and prepare you for newfound abilities, interests, and domains of self-reliance.

Madsen, Charles H. & Madsen, Clifford K. (1998). Teaching / Discipline: A Positive Approach for Educational Development. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, Inc.

Hot Potato (just got hotter)

So... Hot Potato. Here we go! The group forms a circle and passes a safe object around while music is playing. But, when the music stops, the object stops with the person holding it. Here are some twists:

• Patient-preferred music - Import songs from iTunes into Garageband and edit them to varying length snippets. I like to edit most track lengths to stop at the end of phrases or at predictable musical breaks, entraining musicality, while cutting a couple tracks at surprising moments to make the game fun. Leave 10 seconds of silence after each track to stop the iPod or CD player between rounds. Send the snippet to iTunes.
• Winners - Depending on the setting you're facilitating within, you may make the person left holding the object a winner, i.e., interpersonal reinforcement, a reward, or empower them to start the next round by saying, "Go!"
• Communication - Instead, you can have the winner respond to a question or prompt you provide. This can be something neutral, self-expressive, social, or treatment oriented. After you have modeled multiple good questions, the winners of some groups may be able to instead ask a new question themselves. 
• Body percussion - Be sure to make Garageband snippets using music with a strong beat; once the group is comfortable with whatever rules you're using to play Hot Potato, you can now remove the object, and instead use body percussion to play. With everybody sitting down, tapping their thighs to the beat with both hands, now pass a hand clap around the circle! Individuals can only clap their hands once the person next to them already has, and only as quickly as the group's thigh-slapping beat!

Lie Down, or Knock On Doors

Cyborg galactic cytoplasmic bob-head

Fab-four intrinsic nucleonic pop is dead.

Left in their dusty trails are the tinnitus symphonies.

Out of silence come these imaginary melodies.

The Garden of Eden wasn’t too shabby,

And then there was philosophy.

Thirteen Fridays my elders, and never old enough.

Somebody examine my life and might it be worth living.

Lie down and cry on the pavement, or knock on doors.

There better never be agreement in the coffee shop.

I’d stop ordering the collected-unconscious-ideas-and-emotions soup.

Lately I’ve been fixating on living out near Jupiter, so soon as this quarter’s over,

I’ll launch my small business towards that Great Red Spot before going under.

The constitution once blinded me.

The visible universe may contain hundreds of billions of galaxies.

At once (and once again [and again] and again) I realize

Our eyes can’t open wide enough.

-MANGO

(Make your own) Music BINGO!

Music BINGO is a lot of fun, and offers the therapist a quick way to increase participation, elevate mood, build rapport, increase attention to task, and facilitate socialization. Encourage players to Name-That-Tune! Some may sing, some may dance!

I have made a BINGO template (for Mac users through Pages, and Windows users through Word) so that it very quick and easy to plug patient preferred songs into 26 different but equal BINGO sheets. Whenever you use the template, the document will automatically save as a new document; you may want to change the bottom left numbers to signify alternate versions.

Spend a few minutes compiling a playlist of 52 songs set on shuffle and then Find and "Replace All" AAA with, i.e., "Break On Through To The Other Side" through replacing 026 with "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." If playing with a manipulative crowd, you may also want to bring the front page and mark which artists/songs have been played.

"Blackbird," by the Beatles

Let us explore "Thirteen Ways of Looking at 'Blackbird'":

I
"Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird."

II
Our flight began with a piece by J. S. Bach, "Bourrée in E minor," a common piece for the lute. Paul McCartney and George Harrison tried to learn the song as children.

III
"Blackbird" was modeled from the Bourrée's simultaneous bass and melodic notes. In the spring of 1968, Paul composed the song as a reaction to the escalating racial tensions in America.

IV
"A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one."

V
"I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after"

VI
Paul not only wrote and recorded the vocals and guitar accompaniment, Geoff Emerick designated a mic to record Paul's celebrated foot tapping. The birdsong was overdubbed just after (And not credited to Paul.)

VII
Paul published a book of poetry and song lyrics titled, "Blackbird Singing."

VIII
You have probably listened to countless guitar players around campfires, amateur videos on YouTube, Sungha Jung, Glee, Crosby, Stills, & Nash, many other professional performances, or Dave Grohl's teasing;

IX
Thanks to on-line guitar tabs and YouTube videos, you too can learn to play this beautiful song, using this (self-acclaimed), "ultimate Blackbird lesson ever made." Or you can just blast the stereo and sing karaoke.

X
My personal three favorite covers are performed by Herbie Hancock and Corinne Bailey Rae together at the White House, Brad Mehldau - who first caught my attention with his Jazz trio's Radiohead covers, and a stirring, solo a cappella arrangement, Bobby McFerrin, the virtuoso vocalist.

XI
If you sit still and listen to any dark black night
You might hear the refrigerator, or the bugs outdoors.
I like to pretend they are blackbirds,
Singing us to sleep, into the light of hopeful dreaming
And as my heartbeat taps,
A guitar sounds in my ears

XII
"The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying."

XIII
Written for the Civil Rights Movement,
Paul, reflecting while performing the 2009 Coachella, "It's so great to realize so many civil rights issues have been overcome."
Still, a timeless song lives on in the hardships, and in the victories, for all generations of dreamers.

24/7: Body Music

In honor of the seventh of this month (see also Twenty-For Seven: 7/7/12), here is a list of body percussion options and several other musical activities you can facilitate for free anytime, anywhere, and with most anybody:

1)   Hand clapping

2)   Fingertips clapping against palm

3)   Thigh slapping

4)   Butt slapping

5)   Chest thumping

6)   Toe tapping

7)   Foot stamping

8)   Finger snapping... and knuckle cracking

9)   Hand rubbing

10) Jeans rubbing (done on side of legs)

11) Whistling

12) Beatboxing vocal percussion and miscellaneous vocal effects

13) Rap/Spoken word freestyling or a cappella singing

14) High-fiving, and clapping games, i.e., Mary Mack, Slide, Pat-a-Cake, etc.

15) Environmental sound orchestras, i.e., basketball bouncing, card shuffling, cup games, etc.

16) Tabletop hand drumming

17) Rhythmic breathing, whereas exaggerating quick breaths in and out are audible and invigorating, counting four “beats” of slow, natural exhalations will be more personal and relaxaing

18) Footsteps while walking to music, or any rhythmic exercises

19) Tap dancing, or any audible dance movements 

20) Air guitar, drums, keyboard, saxophone, etc.,

Alright, so you may prefer having a portable stereo to provide recorded music or a guitar to perform live music while groups exercise, dance, or go on world tours with their new air bands, but I contest that boomboxes are easy to transport and minimize additional equipment needed, that the cell phone available in your pocket can probably play music and will sound louder if you simply place it in a bowl, and c’mon! - you can beatbox, rap, sing, or establish a body percussion groove inherent to the activity! There are also always name games, drama therapy, games of charades, storytelling, "I'm going Camping..." poetry, circle games, "Big Booty" or other quick and easy games, 20 questions, and endless possible discussions about music, musicians, culture or society, self, life, memories, special interests, hobbies, dreams or goals, and plans of action.

Transfer, Transfer, Transfer

"Bear in mind that we all are teachers,

we all are students,

and that to “Transfer”

is the process of moving an object, symbol, or idea

from one closed system to another,

when the two systems contain similar aspects or some similar relationship,

yet retaining a similar meaning (Madsen and Madsen, 1998)."

If you move an object such as a cheese grater from the kitchen into the bedroom, you can paint it and create an affordable earring holder. A symbol of the crucifixion has been generalized to represent Christianity. Because you remember memorizing the names of bones by chaining the information, you might transfer that same procedural idea to teach a new song to people and find success by presenting one line at a time and linking the lines together.

The theory concerning transfers of learning originated in behavioralism. A "transfer of practice" occurs whenever past experience informs and influences learning and performance in new and different situations. Slouching over your new guitar at home will later teach your body to sit with poor posture in a guitar class. You might transfer a learned confidence while playing guitar in front of your classmates when later performing publicly at a local coffee shop. Perhaps you observe how performing those different songs affected the audience, and so later choose to sing "What a Wonderful World" rather than "Yesterday" to elevate a patient's mood.

What is learned in one classroom should apply to another. And your life. And your future. Dressed in a suit and tie, Dr. Cliff Madsen grins while stepping through his classroom doorway and says everyday, "Ladies, gentlemen; take out pen and paper. Write a transfer!" Teaching yourself to think critically both in depth and creatively implies the ability to thoroughly understand a single topic and to also adaptively apply that understanding in endless functional purposes and intellectual pursuits. Rather then seeing the world as several distinct textbooks, practice seeing the world as the internet, rich with encyclopedias, video resources, social media and - downloadable textbook PDFs - that inform "vertical" depth with all possible "horizontal" breadth: connections, references, combinations, metaphors, theories, opinions, song lyrics, and so on. Barry Commoner contributes, "Everything is related to everything else." 

Madsen, Charles H. and Madsen, Clifford K. (1998). Teaching / Discipline: A Positive Approach for Educational Development. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, Inc.

Waking Theme Poetry

Direction and Identity

A maze in a mask, a strange face in the mirror

to look into my eyes strikes me with terror

I feel like a rat, running aimlessly through a maze

counting the dead ends, and dreading long straight passage ways

I stumbled upon a road map

It told the way

It promised better days

I ate it, I haven’t been fed in weeks

Then I felt all direction was lost

That the smoke in my eyes wasn’t just a phase

Then before me, I realized, were maps of all varieties

One spoke of self-knowledge, another identity,

One that I’m in danger of becoming unknown territory

Change and Transition

changes, changes in the air

change is changing everywhere

life is flux

follow those upheavals

if we are nervous, insecure

facing our former ways of life

most familiar surroundings

are beginning

to feel constant

but it is changes, changes in the air

it’s change, the only constant

inner potential is in season

wise old men are still ripely golden

transitioning is our divine or wretched condition

as autumn falls to winter

winter jumps to spring 

keep up with the seasons

before wise old men take flight

Success and Failure

even though the meaning is obscure

the feeling is unmistakable

I must be disciplined

I must be accomplished

I must be perfect

to cross the finish line

what is a victorious feat in the crowd

without gold home alone

Yes, Jesus successfully died

the feeling is unmistakable

though you’re pondering the prize

Anxiety

a compulsive minute for a minute

a desirous hour for an hour

this whole life for the moment that’s going to shred us silly

being chased

trying to flee

falling haltingly through helpless scenes

anxious screams

panicked pity

everybody, oh if only it were anybody but me!

drowning in

apprehension

fragmented adequacy

grotesque embarrassment

Well-being and Optimism

boundless light

over blind seas

illustrating an essence

symphony of colours

skirting over the full weight of burden

a beautifully bright, lifelike fauxbordon

experiencing landmarks of fulfillment

leaving artifacts of achievement

finding milk and honey in high places of the mind

light as air

bright as love’s great grip

minding the finer moments above, ahead

Authority and Responsibility

who is that, there is in the executive chair

why it is the expensive man wearing tall hats

whose responsibility as always becomes

what ever requests further superiors authorize him

Question whosoever wears the pants and concocts the laws

“how so many stacks of paper

  when so few daydreams?”

when will respond a heartless

“

  …

Relationships

your feelings mine do surmise

being myself from more beautiful eyes

knowing we're going to be different now

we're going to be together now

showing each other the world now

minimizing and overcoming unpleasant possibilities

physiologically anticipating even the risk of infidelities

revealing every thought is how

every moment is becoming the Tao

healing each other’s worlds

now seems so natural as the earth stirring grains of sand

an arm curling around, a hand within a hand

everything in the world shines so much brighter now!

things that were stressful are motivating challenges now!

nothing greater than love!

Sexuality

accept this true and beloved cup of wine,

may it burst forth from its dams! 

the purse, too, is among the most common

female genitalia and womb and

also cups, hats, gloves can

be entered by other objects

like shoes  

worn by mother’s feet of

power and domination.

obedience, oh baby

whipped into 

sexual submission by

knives evasive and cunning!

deep 

inside! this soul

celebratory bottle of champagne

ejaculates! over 

ecstatic cries

some male aspect 

atop the female psych!

pulsing erect 

by the candlelight

the blood! 

of menstruation.

the hypnotic

rose of 

love

Frustration  and Anger

competitively playing Tetris

is pushing a rock up a mountain

and

telling your boss, ‘yes..” just one more time,

bottling up feelings,

beyond the point of self-control... bursting,

WHY WON’T YOU STOP YELLING AT ME?

Loss and Bereavement

there’s only a dim light burning up here in the attic

the electric company is receding further, further, 

further away, somewhere else

in heaven, in my thoughts

a puddle drowns me in wishing, wishing, 

wishing if only, if...

why is life so fragile?

the light is

waiting, wondering, howling to the moon

Religion and Spirituality

willing up to the gory of the lord,

collecting our unconscious pity.

paradoxically fearsome,

albeit benign.

mysteriously pure,

though complex.

still without,

when within.

a bottomless hole to measure how wholesome.

-MANGO