Body & Mind – Page 14 – Things Are Good

This Library Wants You to Ride a Bicycle

An active group of academics want more people to be fit and have fun. The Urban Cycling Institute has set out to educate the average person on the multitude of benefits that riding a bicycle has for people and the communities they live in. One of the initiatives they launched is the library of bicycling marketing material that anyone is free to use to promote cycling. They also have a collection of bicycle documentaries which are worth viewing.

What are you waiting for? Safe your health and protect the environment by supporting two wheels.

Cycling is a simple means that connects to a wide range of very complex problems and challenges of contemporary cities. It is intertwined with many aspects of urban life in all its richness and complexity.

Academic attention for this has been very limited. A more structured approach is needed to map these complex relations, understand best practices and foster reciprocal learning between research and practice.

Check out the cycling library.

Fight Book Bans by Reading These Books

Movements in the United States are trying to ban a number of works of fictions which they deem to be problematic. The problem, as they see it, is that certain books can help people question the world around them. Another problem they identify is that some books for children inform the children of previous human atrocities like slavery and the holocaust. Ironically, they are literally burning books. These groups want to deny knowledge and history.

Over at the Atlantic they’ve collected some of the books the anti-intellectuals want to ban. Defy the book burners by reading the knowledge they want banned! If you’re in a region where groups are trying to censor knowledge, stand up and support your librarians.

His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman

Pullman’s award-winning fantasy trilogy is populated with talking armored polar bears, soul-sucking specters, and translucent angels. But ultimately, it’s about a war on adolescence. The story’s villains, all affiliated with an allegorical version of the Catholic Church, are motivated by a perverse desire to keep children innocent—even by essentially lobotomizing them. In contrast, the heroes celebrate knowledge and fight to overthrow the religious hierarchy threatening their world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the books were criticized for their supposed anti-Christian themes and plotlines involving witchcraft.

A Special Tomatoes can Help Parkinson’s Patients

Researchers found a way to put a key chemical that helps Parkinson’s patients into tomatoes. The amino acid L-DOPA helps people process dopamine, which in turn, helps alleviate the troubles which Parkinson’s brings. Currently L-DOPA is delivered synthetically (through a pill) and this can cause severe side effects, whereas delivering it “naturally” in an organic vessel reduces the likelihood of side effects. Maybe this will lead to other pills being converted to delicious foods!

The scientists’ research focused on turning tomatoes into a sort of factory to produce Levodopa (L-DOPA), a major Parkinson’s therapeutic. L-DOPA has been the gold standard drug for the management of PD symptoms since 1967, but it is typically obtained from synthetic sources. There are serious concerns about a shortage of the drug as incidences of PD rise. Turning tomato plants into factories to make this natural compound carries several benefits over synthetic versions or having L-DOPA synthesized naturally by other plants.

Thanks to Neva!

Work Culture is Changing for the Better

Managers who care more about time than results will have to change thanks to better approaches to work. The idea of having to sit at physical location all day regardless of how busy you are is no longer acceptable. A new attitude to work is a postive thing about the pandemic; ongoing flexible hours, a four day work week, and results driven work are all being considered.

Workers aren’t asking for more money, they are asking for respect.

“It is a lot more feasible, possible, imaginable, accessible because we’ve practised so much working from home,” said Ezzedeen, who holds a PhD in organizational behaviour and development.

“And people have developed ways of working from home — setting up their home office, figuring out how they’re going to talk with a team, investing in the technology to support it. So there’s no going back.”

Thompson said a results-only work environment requires a shift in thinking about what it means to manage.

“The manager is not managing ‘me’ anymore. The manager is managing work. Not me. I don’t have to ask permission to go to the dentist. I don’t have to say, ‘Oh, I’m coming in at nine this morning instead of eight. Is it OK If I go to my child’s play?’ All of that crap disappears.”

Kids Taught to Think the World is Nice are More Successful

kids

Children raised with a positive world view are more successful than children raised with a negative one. A negative instruction about the world given to kids could be to distrust strangers despite the evidence that a child isn’t likely to be harmed by someone they don’t know. It turns out that over a lifetime primarily negative impressions of the world negatively impacts one’s measurable success in life. The lesson here is to be positive and show children the good in the world.

The world is a good place with good people, don’t believe the haters.

Primal world beliefs (‘primals’) are beliefs about the world’s basic character, such as the world is dangerous. This article investigates probabilistic assumptions about the value of negative primals (e.g., seeing the world as dangerous keeps me safe). We first show such assumptions are common. For example, among 185 parents, 53% preferred dangerous world beliefs for their children. We then searched for evidence consistent with these intuitions in 3 national samples and 3 local samples of undergraduates, immigrants (African and Korean), and professionals (car salespeople, lawyers, and cops;), examining correlations between primals and eight life outcomes within 48 occupations (total N=4,535) . As predicted, regardless of occupation, more negative primals were almost never associated with better outcomes. Instead, they predicted less success, less job and life satisfaction, worse health, dramatically less flourishing, more negative emotion, more depression, and increased suicide attempts. We discuss why assumptions about the value of negative primals are nevertheless widespread and implications for future research.