• Is Social Psychology Biased Against Republicans?  Maria Konokova in The New Yorker.  Combine with an interesting BBC podcast episode:  Political Prejudice - "If you think that you are rational and unprejudiced, Michael Blastland hopes you will be open minded enough to listen to the evidence which suggests that you are probably not."

• Schools for Life - 10 schools that are changing the way we see education.  Ben Keene at Medium.
  
  
• Beyond Deterministic Genes: The Morphogenetic Field.  What if our genes were merely building blocks, and a greater intelligence was in charge of whether or not we can throw a basketball from the free throw line and get nothing but net every time...Truththeory.com
  
  
• How to push past that terrifying dip in motivation - that horrible mixture of discouragement, disappointment, difficulty, and despair?  It means you’re on to something.  ZenHabits.com
  
  
• Redefining Capitalism.  Despite its ability to generate prosperity, capitalism is under attack. By shaking up our long-held assumptions about how and why the system works, we can improve it.  McKinsey Quarterly

• 10 ways the world will get worse in 2015.  The World Economic Forum isn’t optimistic about the planet’s prospects for a happy new year.  Here is the full report.
  
  
• 33% of Eligible Voters turned out for the recent midterm elections in the world’s top democracy.  During a time where 100’s of thousands die each year around the world trying to gain the right to vote, that is abysmal.  To remedy this, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders Calls for Voting Holiday to 'Fix' Failed Democracy and introduces legislation to create 'Democracy Day' to increase turnout.  The United States currently ranks 120th in the world for average national turnout, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.
  
  
• The Meaning of Namaste: Many Translations, One Universal Intention
  
  
• Student Science Experiment Finds Plants won’t Grow near Wi-Fi Router.  Ninth-graders design science experiment to test the effect of cellphone radiation on plants. The results may surprise you.


• Eat less meat.  Saving the Planet, One Meal at a Time​.   Truthdig.com
  
  
• Google’s education evangelist believes the power of continuous, immediate, and proactive learning is now a reality and his ten year old has mastered it.   
  
  
• This Device Diagnoses Hundreds of Diseases Using a Single Drop of Blood.  Known as rHEALTH, the technology was developed over the course of seven years with grants from NASA, the National Institutes of Health, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
  
  
• Fluoride Named a Neurotoxin in Top Medical Journal The Lancet

  
  

• The Spiritual Tourist: A Personal Odyssey Through the Outer Reaches of Belief (1998), by Mick Brown.  Mr. Brown is a freelance journalist based in London and this book traces his own personal journey into understanding various spiritual belief systems on a trip through India, his own backyard in England, and the U.S..  He is a wonderful writer and his approach to trying to understand what is real, what is imagined, and what is timeless makes for very entertaining reading.  “There is a common misconception that karma means surrendering to fate, the acquiescent acceptance of your lot.  But as George talked, it struck me that it actually means accepting responsibility.  You carry the responsibility for your past actions in your present circumstances; you sow the seeds of your future circumstances - in this life and lives to come - in your present actions. It is a belief that eradicates blame; a valuable corrective, it seemed to me, in a time in which people increasingly held others - parents, school, government, the great amorphous mass of society - responsible for their misfortunes."

• Free the Mind.  a film by Danish filmmaker Phie Ambo, looks at the groundbreaking research that world-renowned neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson is doing on the beneficial effects of long-term meditation at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds.  Watch it on Netflix.
  
  
• Sonic Highways- the new documentary by the rock band Foo Fighters recently appeared on HBO.  Each song on their new album was recorded in a different American city.  The documentary captures the making of each song and the unique musical heritage of each location.  I saw the first episode which features Chicago.  It is fantastic - incredibly well done.  
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• Debate: Does Income Inequality Impair The American Dream?  NPR’s Intelligence Squared Debates Podcast.

• Kenny Barron & Dave Holland – The Art Of Conversation (2014).  Some things just get better with age.  Two senior jazz masters, one on one, nothing but beautiful conversation.
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• Amy LaVere – Runaway's Diary - singer songwriter Amy LaVere mixes Nashville leaning sound with world weary ethos.  Excellent sonics.
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• Annie Lennox – Nostalgia - (2014) - One of my favorite albums of 2014.  Annie Lennox is always intelligent, insightful, and has the most remarkable way of expressing angst with an undertone of confidence and power.  She does some beautiful renditions of classic songs on this disc.
  
  
• Kristian Bezuidenhout – Mozart: Piano Concertos K.453 & 482 - Picture the movie Amadeus where Mozart is playing with a small ensemble in the palace of Vienna.  This disc will make it seem as if you are there.
  
  
• Mark Whitfield – True Blue - (1997) - The young jazz guitar genius at his best.  Whitfield went on from there to establish a solid solo career as well as being one of the jazz world’s top guitar sidemen.
  
  
• Iiro Rantala – My History of Jazz -(2012) A wonderful hybrid jazz and classical disc.  Iiro Rantala is a Finnish jazz pianist. He studied piano in the jazz department of Sibelius Academy and classical piano at the Manhattan School of Music.
  
  
• R. Carlos Nakai – Talisman - The wisdom of the Shaman in digital audio form. Nakai is a Native American musician and anthropologist of Navajo-Ute descent. Superb.
  
  
• Herbalist Pam Montgomery on the Archaic Drum podcast.  She offers an understanding of the origins of disease and the therapeutic use of plant spirits to bring balance and healing. She explains that the evolution of plants has always preceded their animal counterparts and that plant spirits offer a guide to our spiritual evolution–a stage of growth imperative not only for the healing of humans but also for the healing of the earth.
  

• "Don't practice until you get it right. Practice until you can't get it wrong"  -Anonymous
  
  
• "I am only one, But still I am one, I cannot do everything, But I still can do something, And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do something That I can do.” - Edward Everett Hale
  
  
• ​"Energy flows where Focus goes.” - Anonymous
  
  
• ​“Planning is Essential.  Plans are Useless.” - Winston Churchill
  
  
• "Blessed are those who can give without remembering and take without forgetting." - Anonymous
  
  
• “The future for education is not in standardizing but in customizing; 
  not in promoting groupthink and “deindividuation” but in cultivating 
  the real depth and dynamism of human abilities of every sort.”~ Sir Ken Robins
  
  
• "God is not found in the soul by adding anything, but by a process of subtraction." - Meister Eckhart
  
  

• "Your surroundings should make the things you need to do easy and the things you shouldn’t do hard.  What happened when Google put M&M’s in containers instead of out in the open? People ate 3 million less of them in one month." - Dan Ariely, Behavioral Economist, Duke University.

Late Fall 2014 - my favorite place to sit in Little Lehigh Creek Park.

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