Month: March 2010

The wonders of ‘Wonders of The Solar System’

Posted on by Duncan Toms

The Wonders of The Solar System is my favourite programme right now. It’s presented with a refreshing attitude of awe and wonder by the casual and relaxed Brian Cox who, believe it or not, was in D:ream. Things can only get better. Great locations, great imagery, well written and presented.

Among the things I learnt in Ep 1:

Take all the energy used in one year by one country, the USA.
The sun produces one million times this energy in a single second.

Clouds then clumps of hydrogen collapse under their own gravity, heating up, fusing into helium.
Hotter and hotter, this ignites forming a star, a sun.

The sun accounts for 99% of the solar system’s mass.

VLT stands for… erm, Very Large Telescope.

For those in the UK, the first two episodes can currently be seen here

Digitizing Krishnamurti, Part Two

Posted on by Duncan Toms

At KFT in Brockwood, Hampshire, we have begun the second phase of our project to digitize all of Krishnamurti’s video recordings. Last year we captured all of the archive master tapes. We are now on to production master tapes, which include dubbed languages. We are working more than eighteen hours a day on this, making best use of the rented video players. I am on the early shift, which means six o’clock starts. We are using Final Cut Pro, Matrox MX02, on eight-core Mac Pros, capturing to 10-bit uncompressed QuickTime. Each hour we digitize takes up 95GB of disk space, backing everything up on 2TB drives and then LTO-4 tape. After a month of this, we will be able to focus on releasing most of the video titles on DVD and video download.

Fast Food: How to get as much fat, salt and sugar inside you as possible

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Take Kentucky Fried Chicken. My source called it “a premier example” of putting more fat on our plate. KFC’s approach to battering its food results in “an optimised fat pick-up system”. With its flour, salt, MSG, maltodextrin, sugar, corn syrup and spice, the fried coating imparts flavour that touches on all three points of the compass while giving the consumer the perception of a bargain – a big plate of food at a good price.

Initially, KFC meals were built around a whole chicken, with a pick-up surface that contained “an enormous amount of breading, crispiness and brownness on the surface. That makes the chicken look like more and gives it this wonderful oily flavour.” Over time, the company began to realise there was less meat in a chicken nugget compared with a whole chicken, and a greater percentage of fried batter. But the real breakthrough was popcorn chicken. “The smaller the piece of meat, the greater the percentage of fat pick-up,” said the food designer. “Now, we have lots of pieces of a cheaper part of the chicken.” The product has been “optimised on every dimension”, with the fat, sugar and salt combining with the perception of good value virtually to guarantee consumer appeal.

He walked me through some offerings at other popular food chains. Burger King’s Whopper touched on the three points of the compass – then was altered for further effect. In its first, stripped-down form, the burger was explosively rich in fat, sugar and salt. Then the chain began adding more beef, extra cheese or a layer of bacon. McDonald’s broke new ground in another way – by making food available on a whim. “The great growth has been the snacking occasion. You get hungry, you want something, your mind pushes off the reality of what you ought to eat, and you end up picking up a hamburger and a giant soda or french fries.”

Next they introduced a high-fat, high-salt morning meal. “They took what they learned from the core lunch and dinner menu, and applied it to breakfast. The sausage McMuffin and the egg McMuffin are stand-ins for the hamburger. In effect, you are eating a morning hamburger.”

This kind of food disappears down our throats so quickly after the first bite that it readily overrides the body’s signals that should tell us, “I’m full.” The food designer offered coleslaw as an example. When its ingredients are chopped roughly, it requires time and energy to chew. But when cabbage and carrots are softened in a high-fat dressing, coleslaw ceases to be “something with a lot of innate ability to satisfy”.

via Obesity: The killer combination of salt, fat and sugar | David A Kessler | Life and style | The Guardian.

Second Class

Posted on by Duncan Toms

Yesterday evening I taught the second weekly class. It felt very different this time. Last time I didn’t really feel present and wasn’t really sure how the whole thing went. I was rushing through the poses and nervous. This time I was much more comfortable, steady, relaxed and paced the postures better. I felt the nerves and continued gently. I really enjoyed teaching. It is a very new experience for me. I’ve never really taught anything in my life, apart from helping individuals with computer issues. This is very good learning for me, to be in front of a group, to be using my voice, to be sharing. I relish the opportunity to teach in a non-commercial atmosphere at Brockwood Park, not having to be concerned with class sizes, paying for a studio and all that malarky. That may come but for now I’m keeping it simple.

So we come to that point when we know there is this extraordinary sense of self-isolation. We may have a very good job, work furiously, but inwardly there is this tremendous vacuum. We want to fill that and dependence is one of the ways. We use dependence, amusement, church work, religions, drink, women, a dozen things to fill it up, cover it up. If we see that it is absolutely futile to try to cover it up, completely futile – not verbally, not with conviction and therefore agreement and determination – but if we see the total absurdity of it … then we are faced with a fact.

– Krishnamurti, Book of Life, 10 March

Cunning

Posted on by Duncan Toms

The ways of cunning are always complex and destructive. It is this self-protective cunning that makes for attachment; and when attachment causes pain, it is this same cunning that seeks detachment and finds pleasure in the pride and vanity of renunciation. The understanding of the ways of cunning, the ways of the self, is the beginning of intelligence.

– Krishnamurti

March 8

Posted on by Duncan Toms

The birds outside are now in time with the birds in the alarm clock
Six o’clock
They sound much the same
The mornings are getting lighter
Easier to get up
Beginning the day with a stretch
Breathe and relax
Breathe and relax
The sun is warming now, after a long winter

There is only attachment; there is no such thing as detachment. The mind invents detachment as a reaction to the pain of attachment. When you react to attachment by becoming “detached,” you are attached to something else. So that whole process is one of attachment. You are attached to your wife or your husband, to your children, to ideas, to tradition, to authority, and so on; and your reaction to that attachment is detachment.

– Krishnamurti