Flow on demand
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Kennemer Dunes, today. Flow [ on command ]
Min/max temperature: 3°C/10°C; humidity: 72%; precipitation: 0 mm; sea level pressure: 996 hPa; wind SW 25.7 km/h; visibility: 10.0 kilometres; Clouds: Few 701 m., Scattered Clouds 822 m., Mostly Cloudy 1341 m.
"The biomechanics of the foot is a complex subject. […] Unique characteristics are making it possible that the foot, when in need, is rigid, by adjusting the 26 bones into one unity, or, when in need, contrary to that into total flexibility, such as when climbing barefoot. Between these extremities the mobility of the feet is found during walking. The necessity for variation of the activities of the foot-structure comes from the fact that the surfaces we stand and move on differ substantially. From soft and slippery to hard and rough. […] In the western world the foot is more often than not dressed with a semi-regid shell, the shoe. Simply trough these circumstances certain conditions are available for the development of deviations. […] The foot is being formed during the development of the leg during the eighth week of pregnancy. After birth, growth, both with boys and girls, goes slow. There are two main periods with a clearly visible growth spurt, in the first two years and during puperty. On average a girl at the age of 1 and boys with the age of 18 months have feet half the size of adults. […] The relatively large size of the feet is important to provide a broad base on which the body rests. At times this is a compensation for lack of muscle-power and coordination of the child. […] The movement of the separate joints in the foot are rather difficult to describe, because the foot from time to time functions as one whole entity and on other moments is very flexible to adjust to different surfaces, both during standing as during movement. In particular are the possibilities demonstrated of the normal foot as a limb able to grab things, trough people without arms. These people dress their selves, eat, even write with their feet and toes. […] The reality of the saddening number of foot abnormalities and the numerous painful and perspiring feet, show that shoes oftentimes exercice harmful effects upon the feet. Uninjured feet usually are found only with young children and barefoot walking peoples."
Victor H. Frankel, Margraeta Noridn, Chris J. Snijders in 'Basic Biomechanics of the Skeletal System', page 110, 325, first published in 1980 by Lea & Febiger, Philadelphia
"Leadership […] means winning the hearts and minds of others to achieve a common purpose. […] There is a Dutch phrase that reads: A fish starts to stink first at the head. If the leadership at the top of the organisation is not performing up to scratch, then one cannot expect the rest of the organisation to perform well. Leading by example and charisma are of vital importance. This means that the person [ who leads ] takes responsibility especially at moments of confusion and doubt. [ He ] should praise loudly and reprimand softly. A pat on the back or a word of appreciation is extremely important for the confidence […] I once read a phrase of a wise man that said: A good carriage driver never lashes his whip. This wise man did not mean to imply that the carriage driver should not use his whip, but that he should manage his carriage in such a way that it was not necessary to use it. […] Job satisfaction is extremely important for people in any organisation in order to gain the best results. One can achieve that by creating the circumstances in which people can use their talents, their initiatives. They should feel […] respected […] in the organisation. If the people in the unit feel happy, i.e. have high morale, the performance of a unit will be first rate. That also helps to alleviate stress. […] Management of stress must start during preparations [...] A number of factors are to be considered [ , 1 ] realistic training [ ; 2 ] unit cohesion [ ; 3 ] good communication [ ; 4 ] to expect the unexpected. [ ; 5 ] time out. When a unit works hard […] it is necessary to give [ them ] a break from their stressful environment [ by ] providing an opportunity for rest and recuperation. […] I have learnt from the mistakes I made during my commands. Those lessons appeared to be very useful during the peace support operations in which I participated. The responsibilities of a commander are enormous. It is a lonely job. He cannot delegate responsibility. He can only delegate some powers. But he does not have to feel lonely when he puts his trust and his confidence in his subordinates. Make time for the people that are entrusted to your care and you will not be disappointed."
P.C. Cammaert, in 'NL Arms', page 31, 33, 37, 38, 39, first published in 1997 by RNMA, Breda
"Bolstered by mortar and artillery fire, the troopers, outnumbered sometimes five to one, fought all trough the morning to clear the zones. In the wild, chaotic fighting that ensued over a period of four hours on the zones, one of the most beloved officers in the 82nd, the heavyweight champion of the division, Captain Anthony Stefanich, was killed. "We've come a long way together," he told his men. "Tell the boys to do a good job." Then he died."
Cornelius Ryan in 'A Bridge Too Far', page 363, first published in 1974 by Simon and Schuster, New York
"Scratching through the garbage, at the end of time"
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Haarlem, today. A positive (open, balanced, healthy, alert, empty, beginner's) mental attitude, setting achievable goals, deep breathing and pre-visualizing 'success'; this we practice trough training, over and over and over [ jumping in, crawling, stumbling, walking, running, climbing, smiling ]
"Nobody saw
The holy concubine
Scratching through the garbage
At the end of time"
"End of Time" , track 4 on Motörhead's twenty-first studio album 'Aftershock' . Released 18 October 2013, produced by Cameron Webb
Connection
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Kennemer dunes 360° between Zandvoort and IJmuiden, today. Look and see [ process and show ]
Min/max temperature: 7°C/14°C; humidity: 98%; precipitation: 1 mm; sea level pressure: 1008 hPa; wind: WNW 43.0 km/h; visibility: 10.0 kilometres; Clouds: few 670 m., overcast: 975 m.
" [ The ] concept of stress may indicate any state of reduced well-being varying from being in a bit of a hurry to a complete nervous breakdown. In a more strict sense, it refers to a state of exhaustion resulting from chronically having to deal with problems and anxieties, which in themselves qualify as inconveniences rather than threats of life. [ The ] notion of stress invariably refers to a less than desirable condition. When originally conceived, however, it was meant to denote a neurological and visceral reaction known as the "fight-or-flight" phenomenon. This reaction results in a readiness to deal with imminent danger by either fighting or fleeing. Since this constitutes an elementary survival mechanism, such a stress reaction should be considered both normal and healthy. In everyday life it is only if a state of heightened alertness and preparedness for action is maintained over a long period of time, without any breaks for recovery, that the effects of stress are potentially harmful. In normal life […] damaging effects occur if there is no plausible opponent to fight or fly from: e.g. if the threat originates from a bureaucratic machinery, or if an insurmountable work-load is self inflicted. Since there is no clear way to deal with these problems actively and effectively, the individual may resort to emotional coping strategies. […] these strategies may give rise to damaging symptoms: sleeplessness, overconsumption of tobacco and alcohol, irritability and tension. […] Fight and flight are behavioural categories. They are mutually exclusive. Although obviously related to fight and flight, courage and fear are not mutually exclusive. [ People ] may be frightened and courageous at the same time. Most people […] agree that there is no courage without fear. Fearlessness may strike the observer as an exceptional characteristic, even as something odd; it does not qualify, however, as true courage. The notion of courage presupposes the presence of fear. It is fear conquered in the interest of some worthy cause.
[…] Fear in itself is […] complex. [ It is best ] be understood as consisting of three components: a subjective reaction (the awareness of fear), a physiological reaction (like sweating or trembling) and an avoidance reaction (flight, taking shelter). The three reactions may or may not occur together. One may feel frightened without any bodily symptoms showing, and the reverse may be the case as well […] they are loosely coupled. One consequence […] of fear is that it is not always possible to tell whether a person is anxious. This may even be unclear to the person concerned. [ How a person ] is likely to respond to a serious threat […] cannot realistically be predicted. There is not a lot of reliable evidence for personality characteristics related to either courage or cowardice. If [ people ] are trapped between the options of fulfilling [ their ] duties [...] or relinquishing them [...] because neither is a viable option, [ people ] may suffer a breakdown. This, too, is an outcome which is hardly accounted for by characteristics like emotional stability. It is likely to be determined by situational factors […] Being subjected to [ a threat ] without the possibility of retaliation or adequate shelter is a typical situation where fight nor flight are plausible options, and a breakdown may be all that is left. The strains of the situation are overwhelming to a degree that antecedent emotional stability is hardly decisive. […] If no action or response whatsoever is instrumental in determining the outcome of a crisis, a collapse of the individual as an autonomous, self-directing system may occur. […] There are a number of factors which appear to have a buffering effect against interpreting a [ threatening ] situation as out of personal control. [...] A sense of confidence may enable a [ person ] to maintain his or her share of morale and endure […] tensions. […] Notable factors contributing to this effect are adequate training, trust in fellow [ people ] and excellent equipment. Since people derive the meaning of any situation largely from the way others seem to react to it, contagion is a major cause of a [ person's ] interpretation of a [ threatening ] situation as challenging, frightening or hopeless. The emphasis on contagion and social support in shaping a particular situation […] is tantamount to stressing the role of the [ leader ] in setting an example and managing attributions of meaning by subordinates."
J. Extra in 'NL Arms; Dealing with Danger and Stress', page 150, 151,152, 153 first published in 1998 by RMA, Breda, The Netherlands
"Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you overstep not the modesty of nature: for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her one feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now, this overdone or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one must, in your allowance, overweigh a whole theatre of others."
From: William Shakespeare's 'Hamlet, Prince of Danmark', Act III, scene II, written between 1599 and 1602, page 961 of 'The Complete Works of William Shakespeare', first published in 1958 by Spring Books, London
" [ If ] you imagine the story as a house with many floors, some dark, some light -- some small rooms and some larger rooms with doors and windows and ceilings and suchlike -- and then acknowledge that fact that no [ two ] people in all our wonderful world are capable of furnishing, decorating, repairing or renovating the same house in the same way -- but they all may possibly want at least to be a 'Happy House' or a 'Cosy House', or even a 'miserable house'. The beauty of it is that presentation is the way we communicate, we present ourselves in certain clothes in certain colours to convey a certain signal -- all presentations of any kind are transmitted and received through codes of language, alphabets, numerals etc. -- but how all this is assembled before presentation is precisely where the individual mind and vision meets an object and translates that same object out to the rest of the world -- transformed into a massage, a statement incorporating Personality -- 'this is storytelling'. If this becomes a sequence of objects, then it becomes a narrative structure. Angle of vision -- the movement -- the poetry, no one being is […] the same. This is the human alchemy behind any frame of any story…"
Anthony Dod Mantle in 'Framing, A Symposium on Cinematography', page 148, edited by Andreas Fisher-Hansen, Igor Koršič and Tina Sørensen (unpublished manuscript)
Eintracht
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Zandvoort an der holländischen Nordseeküste, 360° heute. Geist [ wind ]
Min/max temperature: 8°C/11°C; humidity: 66%; precipitation: 0 mm; sea level pressure: 1036 hPa; wind: SW 20.9 km/h; visibility: 10.0 kilometres; Clouds: Few 1188 m.; Moon: Last Quarter, 39% illuminated
"I don't smoke marijuana. […] I smoke herb. The lawmakers make every name illegal to incriminate the underprivelaged; I will happen to be one of the so called 'underprivileged'. […] It is totally illegal for me not to smoke herb. And totally unlawful, or what you would say: ungodly, because it is against my religion, not to smoke herb. […] Grass for the animals and herbs for the use of man. [...] Igziabeher [...] I will fear no evil."
Peter Tosh from: 'Peter Tosh, Best Of Peter Tosh And Interviews' published by Justice Sound on Soundcloud
"U.S. drug-policies have been designed to try to compel people to drop using soft-drugs, like marijuana, and turn to hard-drugs, like coke -- that's actually the case. I don't say that they thought of it and decided to do it, but that's what the policies are. In fact it is almost a concomitant of the fact that marijuana is big and bulky and easy to detect, and highly industrialised drugs are harder to detect. […] Why [ is ] tobacco legal but marijuana is illegal? Tabacco is vastly more lethal and destructive than marijuana, they are not even in the same domain. Tobacco is the [ second ] most lethal substance around […] the most lethal is sugar […] But tobacco is close second. […] Why is tobacoo legal and marijuana illegal? […] Marijuana is kind of like solar energy, it will grow anywhere. It will grow in your backyard. It is a weed, it grows everywhere. Tobacco is an industrial crop; you can make money on it. Lot of inputs, takes a lot of capital and so on. If you have something legal that anybody can do, you are not gonna make any profit on it, so you better make it illegal. On the other hand, if you got something that people can make a lot of profit on, especially agro-bussines and pesticides, vertilizer-companies […] it better be legal so you get away with it. […] Fact is, marijuana is made illegal [ though] there hasn't been one recorded overdose in 60.000.000 users […] a very high percentage of people now in jail are there because someone found a marijuana joint in their pocket quite literally. [ In consequence of the fact that marijuana is big and bulky and easy to detect ] Colombia shifted from producing marihuana […] to producing cocaine, industrial drug."
Noam Chomsky 'Why Marijuana is Illegal and Tobacco is Legal', lecture given on Columbia at MIT in Boston in 1995, first published on July 6, 2012 by argusfest on Youtube
"Herb isn't drugs. It could never be drugs. Drugs was invented in chemical labs, you see? […] Anything that is right is said to be wrong, and anything that is good is said to be bad. Look at how long me smoke herb and every time me smoke herb all it inspire me to do is speak of righteousness and do good. If there was no herb you would have had more mad people and more sick people. You wouldn't have people go one way blind. So herb have to be here […]"
Peter Tosh in 'Peter Tosh talks on Raste Reggae & Ganja', first published in Home Grown Magazine Summer 1979, UK
"Psychology deals with the organisation and use of information, not with its representation in organic tissue. […] Perhaps the simplest and the most influential account of memory is that given […] by the English empiricist philosophers. [They ] assumed that one retains "ideas," or "conceptions," which are nothing but slightly faded copies of sensory experiences. These ideas are links to one another by bonds called "associations." Ideas become "associated" whenever the original experiences occur simultaneously or in raided succession ("temporal contiguity"), and perhaps also if they are similar. A person's ideas are not all conscious at any given moment. Instead, they become aroused successively, so that only one or a few are active at once. The order in which they "come to mind" is governed by the associative links, and therefore by prior contiguity in time. As James Mill wrote in 1829, "our ideas spring up, or exist, in the order in which the sensations existed, of which they are copies" […] In this view, mental processes are by no means "constructive." Instead of the creation of something new in each act of remembering, there is only the arousal of something that already exists."
Ulric Neisser in 'Cognitive Psychology', page 281, first published in 1967 by Pretice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Today/in_the_trainings_factory
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Today in the trainings-factory.
(On the picture: Serious face, to get the footprint picture and have lunch!)
Today was a ******* day: wet, muddy, foggy, with steady and interesting fresh air and wind, Distance 28,9 kilometres. Very quiet, also on the beach, maybe 10 living human-souls and two swans in a pond. Whatever the weather: embrace it and make fun!
