Thursday 15 October 2009

World of warcraft - A child freaks out and behaves like a wild animal becuase his mother cancels his WOW account.

This video below is an example of what people are becoming. Slaves to technology. This young man, who has obviously been playing World of warcraft so much so that his mother has had to take control and cancel his account.

This game seems young men and woman and children sitting for hours and days on end glued to their machines, with out water and food sometimes.

It is not only extremely unhealthy, but it is stunting the physical and emotional growth of thousands of young people across the world.

Stop your children playing these games and get them outside in to the world to interact with real people.

Watch this clip, I have never seen anything like it.

Thursday 8 October 2009

If you came home one day and watched your entire family be murdered, how would it effect you?

Can you imagine this? Please watch this film and share it around.

Wednesday 9 September 2009

Love with out talking.....


Sometimes another person in your life can change you. You don't even have to say a single word.

Thursday 3 September 2009

A MESSAGE TO THE RESISTANCE

We are living in what the Greeks called the right time for a "metamorphosis of the gods," i.e. of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious man within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science.


Tuesday 1 September 2009

Jamie Oliver - Jamies America - New Book

I am quite pleased to have been part of work with Jamie on promoting this book.
You can see more about it all here http://www.jamieoliver.com/jamies-america/

Tuesday 14 July 2009

How to listen to gaydar radio on your ipod or itouch...


Gaydar radio is a dance music station, which plays mostly electronic music. As far as my digital addictions go, digital music is one of my top ten.

I have been listening to the station for around 8 years, or at least since it began. The station began 2001 and has been getting bigger and better since.

The station broad casts 24 hours a day on SKY TV channel 0158 , online at gaydarradio.com and on DAB digital radio in London and the south east of England.

Reason I wanted to write about gaydar radio was to share how you can listen when you are on the go, where ever you are in the world.

All you need is an ipod touch or a itouch or a iphone, a copy of fStream from the application library and the mp3 url stream from the station to add in to your fstream application.

The application is a massive hit with me as you are able to record entire shows to your ipod and play them back when you are on the go or on the tube/train.

The instructions on how to listen to gaydar radio on your itouch or iphone are as follow;

  1. Install fstream from the applications library
  2. http://mp3.gaydarradio.com/high is the mp3 stream url you will need in fstream
  3. open fstream
  4. click on favorites
  5. click edit in the top right hand corner
  6. click add a new web radio
  7. add the station name, the url from above, dont worry about the rest
  8. click save
  9. then tap it and it should play if your connected to the web
You can also record and play back station content anytime you like! GAYMAZING!!!!


Tuesday 19 May 2009

harmonica


harmonica
Originally uploaded by ianapplegate.co.uk
What I love about the internet is the how we share.

It always brings a smile to my face to see people being people and being happy!

My heart sings for the beautiful connections we have with our families and the people around us.

Tuesday 5 May 2009

You are not your emotions

A fire reflected in a lake cannot burn the water. Neither can emotions disturb the mind when you don’t get involved in them. Don’t identify an emotion as your self. The fear or anger is not you, only and impersonal phenomenon. Mentally pull back from the emotion and turn your awareness around to observe it. When in the grip of negative emotion we tend to believe it will never end. But emotions are no more permanent than thoughts. With continued practice you’ll find that you only have to wait and any emotion, whether pleasant or unpleasant, is bound to change.

Monday 27 April 2009

Boy Meets Girl


Boy Meets Girl
Originally uploaded by aqui-ali
Oh what is this life. If full of care, we have no time to stop and stare!

What is this life if full of woe, we have no time to show sorrow!

Hold on to me dear brother, because I will show you how it is done.

Tuesday 24 February 2009

Facebook and Bebo risk 'infantilising' the human mind

Greenfield warns social networking sites are changing children's brains, resulting in selfish and attention deficient young people

Social network sites risk infantilising the mid-21st century mind, leaving it characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity, according to a leading neuroscientist.

The startling warning from Lady Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln college, Oxford, and director of the Royal Institution, has led members of the government to admit their work on internet regulation has not extended to broader issues such as the psychological impact on children.

Greenfield believes ministers have not yet looked at the broad cultural and psychological effect of on-screen friendships via Facebook, Bebo and Twitter.

She told the House of Lords that children's experiences on social networking sites "are devoid of cohesive narrative and long-term significance. As a consequence, the mid-21st century mind might almost be infantilised, characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity.

Arguing that social network sites are putting attention span in jeopardy, she said: "If the young brain is exposed from the outset to a world of fast action and reaction, of instant new screen images flashing up with the press of a key, such rapid interchange might accustom the brain to operate over such timescales. Perhaps when in the real world such responses are not immediately forthcoming, we will see such behaviours and call them attention-deficit disorder.

"It might be helpful to investigate whether the near total submersion of our culture in screen technologies over the last decade might in some way be linked to the threefold increase over this period in prescriptions for methylphenidate, the drug prescribed for [attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder]."

She also warned against "a much more marked preference for the here-and-now, where the immediacy of an experience trumps any regard for the consequences. After all, whenever you play a computer game, you can always just play it again; everything you do is reversible. The emphasis is on the thrill of the moment, the buzz of rescuing the princess in the game. No care is given for the princess herself, for the content or for any long-term significance, because there is none. This type of activity, a disregard for consequence, can be compared with the thrill of compulsive gambling or compulsive eating.

"The sheer compulsion of reliable and almost immediate reward is being linked to similar chemical systems in the brain that may also play a part in drug addiction. So we should not underestimate the 'pleasure' of interacting with a screen when we puzzle over why it seems so appealing to young people."

Greenfield also warned there was a risk of loss of empathy as children read novels less. "Unlike the game to rescue the princess, where the goal is to feel rewarded, the aim of reading a book is, after all, to find out more about the princess herself."

She said she found it strange we are "enthusiastically embracing" the possible erosion of our identity through social networking sites, since those that use such site can lose a sense of where they themselves "finish and the outside world begins".

She claimed that sense of identity can be eroded by "fast-paced, instant screen reactions, perhaps the next generation will define themselves by the responses of others".

Social networking sites can provide a "constant reassurance – that you are listened to, recognised, and important". Greenfield continued. This was coupled with a distancing from the stress of face-to-face, real-life conversation, which were "far more perilous … occur in real time, with no opportunity to think up clever or witty responses" and "require a sensitivity to voice tone, body language and perhaps even to pheromones, those sneaky molecules that we release and which others smell subconsciously".

She said she feared "real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitised and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf. Perhaps future generations will recoil with similar horror at the messiness, unpredictability and immediate personal involvement of a three-dimensional, real-time interaction."

The solutions, however, lay less in regulation as in education, culture and society.

Greenfield argued that the appeal of Facebook lay in the fact that "a child confined to the home every evening may find at the keyboard the kind of freedom of interaction and communication that earlier generations took for granted in the three-dimensional world of the street. But even given a choice, screen life can still be more appealing."

She quoted one user saying they had 900 friends another saying "that you can't see or hear other people makes it easier to reveal yourself in a way that you might not be comfortable with. You become less conscious of the individuals involved [including yourself], less inhibited, less embarrassed and less concerned about how you will be evaluated."

But Greenfield warned: " It is hard to see how living this way on a daily basis will not result in brains, or rather minds, different from those of previous generations. We know that the human brain is exquisitely sensitive to the outside world."

by Patrick Wintour, Political editor

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/feb/24/social-networking-site-changing-childrens-brains