Sorry for lurking all this time. I really like this community, so I thought I'd share.
So this article posits that we might be better off without shoes. I'd like to see some scientific studies on whether or not this is complete craziness.
Being in anthropology has made my epistemology somewhat more problematic from a practical perspective, being never if any given idea is a cultural construct, a result of biological determinism, or an actual workable bit of science.

The Bryant Park Project, April 22, 2008 · It took 4 million years of evolution to perfect the foot, and humans have been wrecking that perfection with every step since they first donned shoes, New York magazine's Adam Sternbergh says.

"Everyone who wears shoes walks wrong," he says, echoing the headline of his recent article, "You Walk Wrong."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor y.php?storyId=89830802&sc=nl&cc=es-20080518 or

Sternbergh calls the ubiquity of footwear a "conspiracy of idiocy." He points out the probability that at no point did any shoemaker say, "Let's design something that works with your foot." In the Middle Ages, for example, people began wearing shoes with higher heels to avoid stepping in other people's excrement. Today, high heels are considered sexy. Whatever their reasons for wearing the shoes they wear, people don't usually consider whether a shoe actually works with their foot, he says.

The human foot works pretty well on its own, Sternbergh says, and it doesn't need a lifetime of help from shoes. He explains the basic illogic of footwear by comparing the concept to a perpetual cast. "Imagine if someone put a cast on your arm when you were 3 years old and you never took it off," he says. "Your arm would stop working. That's kind of what's happened with our feet."

Sternbergh cites a 1940s study of barefoot rickshaw drivers in India. Scientists found that the drivers had unusually healthy feet. Sternbergh says subsequent evidence supports the conclusion that feet don't need shoes.

Why are shoes on virtually every foot, then? Sternbergh says the rationale that most urban and suburban people use is that the ground is hard and our feet need the cushioning of footwear. "But in many places in the world, the ground is quite hard," he says. "[Our ancestors] were able to absorb the shock."

Sternbergh concedes that in most settings, some form of foot covering makes sense. "I'm not going to convince anyone to walk barefoot," he says, acknowledging that he continues to wear shoes as a bulwark against glass, grime and gross things.

He may still wear shoes, but Sternbergh has switched to a model from England called the Vivo Barefoot from the Clark shoe family. Galahad Clark, son of the inventor of the Wallabee — a particularly successful, if traditional, shoe — helped develop the Vivo Barefoot. Sternbergh says the shoe is basically a slipper with a Kevlar sole, to prevent puncturing.

"They kill your heels," he says. "A traditional shoe advocate would say you need to switch back to sneakers that have a big cushiony heel." But a barefoot-walking advocate would say, "You're walking wrong," Sternbergh says. He asked Clark for advice or instruction, but Clark said walking in the shoe is instinctual.

"You'll find that your walk starts to change," Sternbergh says. "You land on your heel, but it's a much softer landing. ... A traditional shoe with a lot of cushioning is designed to allow you to walk with the bad habits that you have because you've been wearing shoes all your life."

For those who cling to their typical footwear, Sternbergh is sympathetic. "Shoes perpetuate shoes," he says, referring to the cycle of coddled feet forever needing high-tech swaddling. "It's a classic self-perpetuating system."

Title: Sundays at Tiffany's
Author: James Patterson and Gabrielle Charbonnet
Rating: 3.5/5
Book: 22/50 (44% completed)
Pages: 309
Total Pages 7,742/15,000 pages(51.61% completed)
Next up: True Love (and other lies) by Whitney Glaskell

Enjoyable book. Kind of cheesy in places but it was an okay read. I think mystery and crime fiction is definately Patterson's forte.

xposted to 50bookchallenge, 15000pages and thirdwatch_gurl

( Book Description from book jacket or back of the book: )

Book 55: Skin Privilege (Grant County Book 6) - US Title: Beyond Reach.
Author: Karin Slaughter, 2007.
Genre: Crime Thriller.
Other details: Large Print Edition. 554 pages.

It was a blog entry of Tess Gerritsen's responding to a diatribe on DearAuthor.com about this book that pointed me in the direction of Karin Slaughter's writing. Therefore, I began reading the series with the foreknowledge that the final one had upset many of Slaughter's long time fans. Finishing the book early this morning, I finally went to look up what the Dear Author blogger had written and it certainly was a white hot rant.

The story itself is quite focused on Detective Lena Adams, who has travelled to her birthplace of Reece, Georgia following a call from a concerned neighbour about her uncle's health. Hank was the one who raised Lena and her twin sister following the deaths of their parents though his struggles with meth addiction made him a very unstable influence in their lives. The reader knows from the prologue and opening chapter that Lena has gotten herself in deep trouble as she has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of a woman who was incinerated alive in a car.

As usual with Slaughter we aren't in pleasant territory and she doesn't spare the details of this murder and other grisly happenings. Jeffrey Tolliver, the chief of police for Grant County, is called by the local sheriff once it is realised that Lena is one of his detectives. Sara, his wife and the local paediatrician/coroner, is no fan of Lena's but insists on accompanying him on the journey to find out what has happened. Once there they discover that the town hides a violent underground world focused on skinhead culture and the production of meth. It isn't long before their lives are in jeopardy.

Having now read all the Grant County books I felt Slaughter excelled herself here in terms of both plot and pacing. She splits the story between what is happening in the present and the recent past tracking Lena's movements leading to her arrest and after. The two plot lines finally come together in a nail-biting conclusion that had me both wanting to know what happens next and hardly daring to turn the page. I am not sure why the title was changed for the USA, though I suspect it is because the title 'Skin Privilege', which relates to the white supremacist movement, might have been considered too controversial by her publishers there.

Slaughter hasn't lost me as a reader over this book no matter how stunned I felt when I finished it. I also have to acknowledge that although I have disliked Lena Adams throughout the previous five novels, that here she was presented in a way that caused me to re-evaluate my former responses and yes, care about her.

A week-or-so ago, I was waiting around the Cutty Sark, when I noticed a sign. It claimed that the Cutty Sark is the world's most famous ship.

Surely, that's not true. In America, the Niña, the Pinta, the Santa Maria, the Mayflower, and the Titanic are all far more famous than the Cutty Sark. I don't know why the Cutty Sark would be quite so famous anywhere outside the UK (and perhaps, given her history, Australia).

But it does raise the question: What is the world's most famous ship?

(Not fleet. Not sailor. Not navigator. Ship. And what is the most famous ship in Russia? India? China? etc.)

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HERE @ lecollage. Post is members-only, but membership is open to all. Enjoy!

It was only a matter of time before they discovered that Global Warming was my fault...


It's fantastic news that Global Warming can be easily solved by everyone going on a gigantic diet.   I am happy in the knowledge that I am saving the plant just by abstaining from crisps.


We can all sleep easy in our beds tonight knowing that our esteemed scientific community have kicked that particular global problem into touch.


Next week they will solve world poverty by blaming it on the French.


I blame Bob Geldof

25) Summer Lovin' by Carly Phillips

This is yet another book from the stack of freebies from the writers' conference in April. I only read a few romance books a year, and I never read contemporary ones. I read through this so I can trade it away.

There is nothing to see here plot wise. Move along. It's as cliche and transparent a romance plot as you can write, but cover blurb espouses that as a positive. The heroine, Zoe, is turning 30, has lots of sexual experience but doesn't want a committed relationship, and when she meets her in-the-adoption-process sister's new "social worker," she hops in the sack with him right away. Kinda kills the chemistry and suspense as far as their relationship. The rest of the book is trying to figure out who is stalking the sister, who is really going to adopt the sister, oh, and for Zoe to admit she's in wuv. The bad guys are predictable, and I patiently waited for the characters to get a clue. It was also tiresome how Zoe's family is constantly described as "insane, wacky, unusual, eccentric, etc." You know, by the second reference, I got it. I didn't need it pounded into my head five times every chapter. Also, I think the mention of summer in the title is meant to indicate when this should be read, because there is no emphasis on summer itself except for Zoe's constant wearing of mini skirts.

I guess I'm not the fluffy "beach read" type.

11. Coupland - Jpod (library)
I've kept reading Coupland's books, and have grown increasing frustrated... this one started pretty good - it reminds you of "Microserfs" - but then I started getting really annoyed around midpoint when the hero goes to China, and the author inserts himself into the story. Really, really borrow-from-library-first kind of book to me.

12. Beckett - Nohow On (library)
13. Beckett - Lessness (library)
This year I'm pretty much reading all Beckett stuff I can find from the library *lol* "Lessness" is very slim (16 pages to read) novella and quite minimal.

14. the Dalai Lama - How To Practice (library)
This book finished my 'leafing through' of buddhism; felt like I'd over-indulged in sweet stuff afterwards. But at least I've read something by DL now XD

15. DiPrima - Revolutionary Letters (library)
Poems; slim book. But a good experience.

16. Milton - Paradise Lost & Other Poems (also includes the play "Comus")(library + borrowed)
PL was pretty good if you can ignore the dripping-like-blood sexism of the second half. Like, why can't Eve be there for Raphael/Michael's explanations more properly? But Lucifer's fall and stuff on the first half was good. The poems were good enough, as was the play.

17. Bennett - The Uncommon Reader
Read this for a book club; a book you can read on a surface-level style or deeper, depending on what you want. But it was a funny, thoughtful little book. Recommended. :)

18. Mendelsohn - I Was Amelia Earhart (library)
One interpretation on what the author imagined AE's last flight could've been like (the real-world version of what happened after the crash would've made a very short book).

19. The Bhagavad Gita (library)(English translation)
Made for a short, idea-full read, well worth the read, though I'm not interested in owning it.

20. Beckett - Poems 1930-1988 (library)(Finnish translation)
Interesting and quick read, though I prefer his other stuff much more. :)

Postscripts, Issue 14 (Spring 2008)

This is the latest issue of Postscripts, the magazine of Peter Crowther's PS Publishing. One of the great things about this magazine is that you can never quite be sure what you'll get (apart from a substantial amount to read -- 144 pages in this issue). It's like (in fact, it pretty much is) having someone knowledgeable and trustworthy present you with a bunch of stories you might like. (Chances are, of course, that you won't like all of them; but I think that's less important than the variety and the opportunity to read something you might not otherwise come across.)

My particular favourites in this issue? 'Island Tales', Jeff VanderMeer's 're-imagining' of four folktales from Fiji, Hawaii and the Philippines; it's as compelling as any telling of folktales that I've read. "Something Borrowed, Something Red" by William Alexander, which evokes the creepy atmosphere of what it might be like to live with the threat of changelings who would take away your child if they had the chance, changelings who have their own rules that they know but you don't. And, best of all, 'The Ghosts We Have Become' by Paul Jessup which, in just seven pages, combines an elegant weirdness with so much about the various damaging effects of warfare. It's a story that grows in my mind the more I think about it.

Have you ever had one of those Blair moments when after weeks of being nice to everyone you have to finally make a decision which means that enemies are made as they see a must have dismissed?  Well this is one of those moments. I have been struggling with Raymond Carver’s “Where I'm Calling From” a collection of thirty-seven stories chosen from several previous collections published over 20 odd years which should therefore be an ideal introduction to his work. And… wait for it… I am going to abandon it unfinished half way despite him being seen As "the American Chekhov or the laureate of the dispossessed”

 Let me say up front, that his prose, ear for dialogue and depiction of the ordinariness of every day life masking unexpressed pain and joy is the best. His stories are like photos that capture the moment frozen with no past or future with all the ambiguity that the unknown allows the reader/observer. The opposite of Norman Rockwell homeliness, more akin to the photos of Walker Evans of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. But they have no plot, twists, surprises, or surface complexity of character. These are often blue collar workers in small-town or rural settings struggling with jobs, partners, children and booze and it’s the unsaid that reveals more then the fractured words.

 The stories reflect his own drink problems and failed jobs and marriage in his 20s so he turned to writing to escape and short stories could get something in quickly to pay the rent and get food on the table. His life did begin to turn around and his work started to get critical alarm in his 40’s before he died of lung cancer. His accessible prose, realistic situations and comprehensible characters are seen as a counter to egghead experimentalism

 But for me, I was left all too often thinking yes and what happens next even while the image created hung in my head. I also think that stories ripped from their original magazine context make the stories work harder then they needed to. I would have welcomed an edition that merged the stories with a set of photographs worthy of the writing. However, if you want to dip in and perhaps read a couple a stories a week or if you enjoy short stories then this is a book for you. As you say at the end of a failed relationship its not you it’s me, and lets remain friends. Knowing it’s really about the lack of passion. Yet the spurned has the chance of real love else where…will that be you?

I just felt like posting a picture and trying out drop.io.
Thanks to popfiend for turning me onto this site. :O)

Some text icons in anticipation of the release of Breaking Dawn. There's icons for different ships, Team Vampire vs. Team Werewolf, and just general Twilight-related text, so there should be something for everyone. :) Enjoy!

20 x Breaking Dawn text

Teasers;


( Annnd, we're back. )

Some text icons in anticipation of the release of Breaking Dawn. There's icons for different ships, Team Vampire vs. Team Werewolf, and just general Twilight-related text, so there should be something for everyone. :) Enjoy!

20 x Breaking Dawn text

Teasers;


( Annnd, we're back. )

The Cleft -- Doris Lessing (Link goes to review on my journal)

Most of us remember the exhilaration of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. That wall symbolized the We/Them mentality that SO last century. Yet walls around the globe are back in fashion. Huge walls meander on for miles separating Sunni's and Shiites in the middle east, and separating Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank. Now America is building miles and miles of walls holding back honest, dependable workers from Mexico. Politicians are staking their careers on the fears of the baby boomers who are terrified that illegals might take their dream of retiring as a greeter at Walmart.

This week, in tiny Postville, Iowa, the government hauled away three hundred meat packing workers with improper citizenship docs. Some of these folks have been here for a decade, paying U.S. and state taxes with every paycheck, yet never claiming a refund, and paying sales taxes with every purchase. On Friday, attendance of the public schools were cut by half as families hid from ICE. Lots of good teachers will lose their jobs if the kids don't come back. Chances are the families will migrate to a nearby state, and start again at menial grimy jobs Americans don't want. Here in Phoenix our asshole Sheriff is at war with our governor and Mayor because nothing in the world is more important to him than rounding up the Mexicans seeking work as roofers in 100 degree weather, or spreading shovel fulls of rocks in the xeriscaped yards in Scottsdale. Our governor and Mayor have had the audacity to suggest that Sheriff Joe chase rapists and murderers instead of house keepers with broken tail lights. The Sheriff is retaliating, as he always does, by opening an investigation of the Mayor.

For some reason I'm reminded of our trolley system here. In the fifties the trolleys rolled over our major streets providing low cost, clean, safe and environmentally friendly transportation to all. The city tore all that out decades ago. Now they're spending a billion dollars to put the trolley system back in place as pollution and high fuel costs prove they were right the first time. Of course there are detractors, complaining that now the beggars and thieves have easy passage to the 'burbs. Those same folks won't complain when their gardener takes the bus.

Tearing it down, putting it up, then tearing it down again. When will we ever learn?

To appreciate this book you have to ignore the misleading hype on the cover that suggests that The Contractor by Charles Holdefer exposes the secret detention and interrogation system expanded and ran by the Bush Administration outside of US and international law. It is political book but not at the level of who is doing what to whom. Instead, it goes to the heart of the western moral and ethical war aims as raised in this passage:

 Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?" And he said, "I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?"

 It is clear that George Young, civilian interrogator contractor and a veteran of the first Gulf war would say no. His reaction when he comes across the burnt out remains of the Revolutionary Guard convoys is to argue:

 ...Because that day, I learned the price. Sure, I was shaken and sickened, and it is something I’d rather not think about or dwell on, but it also taught me something, steeled me, gave me the resources necessary to understand politics in the grown up world and later to become a contractor. This is what I learned: what we take for granted, hold precious, and celebrate remains viable because of our willingness to do this…To let those men get away would’ve been a serious strategic mistake…Any other description is special pleading or making excuses. Or simply lying to oneself. It gives me no satisfaction to say so, but not only will innocents die-they must die.

 The story starts with the consequences of this when in a powerful opening scene we discover what how prisoner #4141 dies. The humanity of the Prisoners are denied, as they are merely oranges being crated when they arrive or faceless numbers.

 George Young is not a monster, which would let us off the hook so the story needs to show us why a good man would get to that position. It does in that we discover that economic and family pressures that lead systematically to that meaningless death. We learn about his poor business track record and happy second marriage (which is being slowly killed by his need to keep secrets). The political playing out of the theme is also examined in his personal life as his big brother is his keeper at key points in George's life.

 Away from the heat of the desert island and in the cold of  a mid west winter on a family Christmas visit  we have the amusing and poignant scenes of having to tackle the Father in Law,( think of  Spencer Tracy at his most grumpy) a  minister of  a struggling flock and a die in the wool fundamentalist. The family idea of fun is Bible Baseball ( questions are asked with the harder they are the more runs they are and George and his son are clueless). At one level this as they are trapped by the snow falls this illustrates the horror that the prisoners have to face. Unlike them, he escapes and answers a call by his brother, which sets of a chain of events where he finally does decide that he is his brother’s keeper.

 The story moves between George’s professional and family life in the now and with flashbacks so that we understand his actions. The other characters are sketched in nicely that make the horrors of the camp and the choices he has to make even more chilling. The use of language and jargon is also clever and the first person POV gives you the reader chance to understand his world whilst questioning it. If it makes more of us more aware of the travesty of a war on terror for Democracy, and Human Rights based on lies and torturing rather then the politics of being my brother’s keepers then I hope it gets the wider readership it deserves.

Photographer: Donna
Number of Photos: Five
Themes: LIST 2. 19) Pass, 31) Suspended, 63) Zen, 82) Inside, 89) Surface

Book Title: Heartland: A Winter's Gift, Special Edition
Author: Lauren Brooke
My rating of the book, F- [worst] to A [best].: A +
Short description/summary of the book:  Since breaking up with Ty and throwing herself into her college work, Amy is more independent and confident than ever. But when she returns to Heartland for her winter break she learns that a lot of things have changed. A pregnant mare will need both Amy and Ty's help to save her. But will the two of them be able to work together again? Amy never realized that coming home for the holidays would be so complicated.
My Thoughts: I've been reading heartland since grade 6 and now I'm in my extra year at high school. I love this series. I love how she rights. For any teens who like horses, this book is excellent!

28 / 50 books. 56% done!

8,446/ 15,000 pages. 56% done!

But we finally had a go at getting our sermons online!

YAY!

They are not in their final format, and certainly they need reducing in size a bit, but two of them are now up on the website.

We haven't really got the streaming running trouble-free, so better to download and listen to them rather than stream them.  There is a little glich on today's... not sure what that is, but it doesn't appear to affect the rest of it.

Congratulations to Mike, Simon, Ken and Lasagne Man for helping us take this great leap forward.

Amusingly, the device we are employing to record them has in the space of the two weeks we've had it, only been referred to at 'the gizmo'.  I have no clue what it's supposed to be called.

I didn't hear Ken's sermon today (the first in a series on the book of Ecclesiastes) because I was teaching in Swordfish.  Last  week I didn't hear what Stephen had to say because I was teaching in Icthus, so this was always something I was ultra-keen to see, mainly because as a Lighthouse teacher someone always helpfully tells you that 'you missed a good one.'

Now we don't need to!

...my wife was just talking about the styling head she had as a child, and I remembered my sister had one as well.

In both these cases they were styled to baldness.

Did you or anyone in your family have one of these and did it eventually end up bald?

Just wondering.

OK I know I shouldn't judge a book by its cover especially after buying the muddled The Malice Box last year on the strength of packaging alone but today when we walked into Waterstones I was so taken by the cover of The Rose Labyrinth that I was hard pressed to walk away from it. I thought I'd better do some research first.

The Rose Labyrinth website.

Aside from symbols that are personally important to me - the red and white roses and the labyrinth, the novel also features Doctor John Dee. The author describes herself as a serious student of esoterica with a love of history, literature, music and myth. Cool. Still she seems to have been making a living out of those series of velvet covered 'Titania's Book of Spells' and the like. l I am not going to hold that against her even if I wouldn't let one of those fluffy magic books into the house. Is lurking under a desire to make a few (million) quid a serious writer or indeed a serious student of the esoteric?

The Oxford University Student Newspaper gives the novel a big thumbs up citing the leap Ms Hardie has taken here from her previous type of books, which is good enough for me. Plus roses, labyrinths and Doctor Dee!!